The House Article | Lords must fight back against dangerous changes to abortion law

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The House of Lords is currently acting as a laudable bulwark against a stream of bad legislation and faces another imminent test of its mettle this week. In an effort to push back against extreme proposals passed to the Lords by the House of Commons, Baroness Stroud has tabled an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to reinstate the requirement for pregnant women to have an in-person medical consultation before being allowed to carry out their own at-home abortions in England and Wales. This safeguard should never have been abandoned, and I was pleased to speak to the amendment last month.

The amendment relates to a clause inserted into the bill by Tonia Antoniazzi MP. Ostensibly, the Crime and Policing Bill aims to reduce violence against women and girls. However, the bill was used by opportunistic MPs to push through clause 208, which would decriminalise abortion for any reason, at any stage, right up to birth, for women in relation to their own pregnancies. Astonishingly, such a consequential change to the law was easily passed after just 46 minutes of backbench debate in the Commons. On a matter touching life and death, that is beyond irresponsible.

This combination of the proposed decriminalisation of abortion for women in relation to their own pregnancies and the continuation of the ‘pills-by-post’ scheme would strip away key remaining safeguards around our already lax abortion laws. I believe it would, in practice, make it easier for women to carry out late-term abortions at home. This is extremely dangerous. Experience shows that not having an in-person medical assessment before an abortion can lead to serious consequences.

Freedom of Information data has revealed that the pills-by-post process has led to an array of serious complications, including sepsis, haemorrhaging, embolisms, renal failure, and trauma to organs. The removal of safeguards also opens the door to abuse, potentially making it easier for partners or family members to coerce women into having abortions. These are the real costs of replacing clinical oversight with self-administration in the majority of abortions in Britain. I am relieved that there is currently no pills-by-post scheme in Northern Ireland, and attempts to introduce one must be resisted.

The public was told that at-home abortions were a pandemic measure. Yet they have quietly become the norm, despite warnings from clinicians and parliamentarians. It has become possible, in practice, for women to have abortions well beyond the 24-week legal limit, since there is no reliable way to verify gestational age without an in-person examination. Fully decriminalising self-induced abortion would remove any legal deterrent against such procedures, effectively inviting more of them to take place.

Baroness Stroud’s amendment offers a straightforward, common-sense corrective: reinstate the requirement for an in-person consultation before pills can be prescribed or taken at home. This would offer protection to women and unborn children after they are old enough to be able to survive outside of the womb. The few cases of women prosecuted for late-term abortions in recent years are symptomatic of a system void of sufficient safeguards in the first place.

Alongside Baroness Stroud’s amendment, peers will have the opportunity to support Baroness Monckton’s amendment to remove clause 208 from the bill altogether. If we fail to do so, women will be able to end the lives of their unborn babies up to birth without criminal liability, effectively decriminalising self-administered abortion to full term. This ought to be unthinkable and would be deeply unpopular with the public.

Indeed, legislating for abortion “to birth without medical help”, as Baroness O’Loan put it in the Second Reading debate, would be to disregard every principle of care and safety that Parliament claims to uphold, ironically turning what were once illegal backstreet abortion practices into a lawful reality, carried out behind closed doors and without medical oversight. This is not progress for women.

The House of Lords is the last line of defence against this reckless proposal. If Parliament sincerely seeks to protect women and girls from harm, peers must vote to restore in-person consultations for those considering abortions at home when they vote on these amendments this week. Anything less would make a mockery of the bill’s claimed commitment to safeguard vulnerable people.

Baroness Foster is a non-affiliated life peer and the former First Minister of Northern Ireland