House of Commons votes to decriminalise self-induced abortions - but critics says it will permit abortion 'up until birth'
Pro-life campaigners have reacted with dismay after MPs voted to remove criminal sanctions against women in England and Wales who illegally end their own pregnancies.
Critics say the changes will permit self induced abortions ‘right up until birth - for any reason’.
The change came through Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi’s amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill, which was supported by MPs 379 to 137.
The landslide vote to decriminalise the procedure is the biggest change to abortion laws in England and Wales for nearly 60 years.
Women who terminate their pregnancy outside the law, for example after 24 weeks, will no longer be at risk of being investigated by police - if the vote is approved by the House of Lords.
Ms Antoniazzi previously assured her colleagues the current 24-week limit would remain, abortions would still require the approval and signatures of two doctors, and that healthcare professionals “acting outside the law and abusive partners using violence or poisoning to end a pregnancy would still be criminalised, as they are now”.
However after the vote - in the Commons on Tuesday night - pro-choice groups said they would now work to remove the remaining sanctions also.
As an issue of conscience, MPs were allowed to vote according to their personal beliefs.
Antoniazzi highlighted a series of cases where women had been arrested for abortion offences, such as Nicola Packer, who took abortion medication at home when 26 weeks pregnant - 16 weeks after the ten week limit. She told her trial she did not realise her pregnancy was so advanced.
Upper Bann DUP MP Carla Lockhart said the change in legislation will “permit abortion until birth". The reality of this is "not just ignored but either dismissed or shouted down" when it is raised, she added.
"That, however, is the reality of what has been agreed."
Aontú Deputy Leader Gemma Brolly also said the move would allow "home abortions up to any gestation" period.
Normally, she said, this type of legislation originates in London, yet this time Westminster is "actually catching up to the heinous anti-democratic imposition" of abortion legislation on Northern Ireland in 2019.
She noted that the Alliance Party and the SDLP supported the decriminalisation vote at Westminster.
But pro-choice campaigner and social policy academic Goretti Horgan strongly supported the proposed changes.
According to the Northern Ireland 2018 Life & Times Survey, she said, 89% of people agree that women should never be imprisoned for an abortion, and 82% agreed that such cases should be a matter for medical regulation and not criminal law.
She added: “We can only welcome any move at Westminster to end the police investigations and subsequent prosecutions of women there who caused their own abortions outside the regulations of the 1967 Abortion Act”.
However, Dawn McAvoy, from Northern Ireland campaign group Both Lives Matter, said the changes mean women in England and Wales will be allowed to terminate their own pregnancy "at any stage up to birth”.
"This change means that a woman could self-induce her abortion outside of any medically regulated framework of care,” she added.
TUV parliamentary aide Dan Boucher said that the proposal passed by MPs was “barbaric” and, like many other critics, he said this would “allow abortion right up until and during birth for any reason".
The mindset of MPs, he said, reminded him of people in history who persuaded themselves and others "that there have been certain human beings who are not really human".