In the United Kingdom, some women have been prosecuted for obtaining illegal abortions after 24 weeks in recent years, and pro-abortion medical groups claim the law is causing “trauma and cruelty” to women.
According to The Guardian, 30 groups — including the British Medical Association, the Faculty of Public Health, the British Society of Abortion Care Providers, and the royal colleges of GPs, nurses, psychiatrists, midwives, and anaesthetists — have issued a joint statement in this regard. Sky News states, “Campaigners want abortion decriminalised so it is a healthcare matter, rather than a legal one.”
But intentionally killing innocent human beings cannot reasonably be considered health care.
Currently, women who wish to undergo an abortion in England and Wales must have the approval of two doctors. There are further criteria required to have an abortion after 24 weeks, including that the baby must have a severe health diagnosis or there must be a significant risk to the mother’s life or health if the pregnancy continues. Failing to follow the law could lead to a life imprisonment. However, pro-abortion groups want far more than to end prosecutions for women.
Sky News writes, “Although prosecutions are rare, in the 10 years to April 2022, police in England and Wales recorded 67 cases of procuring an illegal abortion, according to data obtained by the Observer under the Freedom of Information Act.”
Due in part to the availability of mail-order abortion pills since the Covid pandemic — and the fact that women can obtain the pills merely by claiming to be under 10 weeks gestation when they are much further along — babies have been aborted at ages they could have survived outside the womb. At times, this has led to prosecutions.
Expanding the law
Pro-abortion groups argue that though the UK’s abortion law was updated in 1967, the original law dating back to 1861 was simply amended instead of being repealed. Sky News notes: “The law is framed in a way that means abortion is not a right. Instead, it gives an exemption from prosecution in certain circumstances – when two doctors agree it would be risky for the mental or physical health of the woman. This is more limited than many other European countries, which allow abortions ‘on demand’.” Despite this claim, abortion is quite restricted in many European countries.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) is leading the charge to change the law, arguing that the criminal law being used to prosecute women is outdated and must be ‘modernized’ in order to come in line with other nations on abortion law.
On its website, it lists the complaints of the 33 organizations that support abortion law expansion, stating that the rule requiring two doctors to approve an abortion “prevents qualified nurses and midwives from delivering holistic abortion services grounded in best practice.” In short, the pro-abortion groups want nurses and midwives to be able to commit abortions.
“We believe that abortion law reform must build on existing rights, not remove them – that means no reduction in the time limit, no removal of the right to end a pregnancy on the grounds of severe foetal anomaly, and no criminalisation of women based on why they’re seeking an abortion.”
RCOG offers six proposed changes to the law:
- No prosecution of women for self-induced abortion
- Nurses and midwives must be allowed to commit abortions
- The requirement that two doctors sign off on an abortion must be struck from the law
- Women should not have to disclose “intimate details” as to why they want an abortion
- Women’s personal information obtained during their abortions must not be shared with the government
- Abortion must be funded adequately through the NHS, including the training of abortionists
Focus on prosecutions of illegal abortions
Much of the focus from pro-abortion groups appears to be on the “unprecedented rise” in women facing prosecution for abortions. According to The Guardian, six women have appeared in court over the last two years for violations of the Offences against the Person Act, including Bethany Cox, who used misoprostol to kill her viable preborn child during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. It is unclear how old Cox’s baby was when she took the abortion drugs, but the charges against her stated that she had “intent to destroy the life of a child capable of being born alive, by a willful act, namely administering drugs to procure abortion…”
Despite this, Cox was acquitted of the charges against her.
Another woman, Carla Foster, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for her abortion at 28 weeks (six to seven months) pregnant in May 2020, but following public outcry she was given a 14-month suspended sentence and was released. Foster obtained the pills by lying to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) — the UK’s largest abortion business — and saying she was not yet 10 weeks pregnant.
Sammy said she wanted an abortion but was turned away because she was beyond the 24-week limit. She said she nearly bought the abortion pills online but changed her mind. However, she went into preterm labor and delivered her son three months early, performing CPR to save his life. She was suspected of having an illegal abortion, but that investigation was dropped due to a lack of evidence.
And Katie (not her real name) obtained abortion pills through the mail at (what she thought was) seven weeks pregnant. She said she went into labor at home and gave birth to a stillborn baby who was older than 24 weeks gestation. Staff at the hospital called the police, but Katie maintains that she did not realize how far along she was.
The pro-abortion groups pushing for an expanded abortion law want to eliminate the prosecutions of women who procure abortions against the UK law, though many of the women facing investigations and prosecutions carried out abortions beyond the 24-week mark. Babies born as young as 21 weeks are capable of surviving outside the womb when given proper medical care.
The battle to end investigations into illegal abortions exposes the true agenda of these groups — which is not to do what is best for women, but to find ways to further profit financially from abortion.
Return to the former law or expand it further?
Journalist Melanie McDonagh with the BBC attributes the rise in abortion investigations in the UK to the mail-order abortion pill expansion during the COVID-19 pandemic; a no-test protocol allows women to obtain and take the drugs without an exam to determine their baby’s gestational age. Allowing women to take the abortion pill at home while there is a law on the books against abortions after 24 weeks or without the approval of two doctors is the reason for the increase in prosecutions, contends McDonagh.
“If we return to the situation before telemedicine in 2020, then there would be a guard against most of these cases happening in the first place,” she argues.
But rather than return to the previous rule that safeguarded against risky at-home abortions, the pro-abortion groups want to further eradicate common-sense abortion restrictions. Inch by inch, pro-abortion groups will continue to push for greater abortion expansion until it is allowed at any time, for any reason, free of charge to any woman who wants one (on the taxpayers’ dime), can be committed by nearly anyone, and is cemented in law as an unrestricted “right.”
This should be obvious to all who are watching as protections for defenseless preborn human beings are gradually chipped away.
Tell President Trump, RFK, Jr., Elon, and Vivek:
Stop killing America’s future. Defund Planned Parenthood NOW!
