Reproductive rights

Another woman due for trial in a UK court next year for carrying out an abortion. “It is clear that prosecutors are taking a much more aggressive stand against women with unexplained pregnancy loss or who are suspected of having an illegal abortion”, Jonathan Lord, co-chair of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, told The Times . There had been only three such trials in the previous 160 years. Pandemic Bethany Cox faces charges of child destruction and procuring her own miscarriage when she was just 19 years old, using the abortion pill misoprostol. The accusation relates to...

On 12 June 2023 Carla Foster was sentenced to a 28-month custodial term for carrying out an abortion that exceeded the legal term limit of 24 weeks. Foster’s sentence has since been reduced on appeal to a 14 month suspended sentence and she has been released from prison. This case has reignited calls for the full decriminalisation of abortion. Demonstrations are planned for 2 September. The Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (OAPA), the Victorian law that Foster was prosecuted under, was passed during a time when women had little medical and legal rights over their bodies. OAPA came into law...

The latest official figures , recently released, covering the first six months of 2022, show that 123,219 abortions took place in England and Wales. It’s an increase on the 105,488 over the same period in 2021. As Abortion Rights chair Kerry Abel has commented, the cause may be the cost-of-living crisis. The big majority of abortions were in the early stages of pregnancy: 67% up to and including seven weeks gestation; 93% up to and including 12 weeks, and 98% up to and including 17 weeks gestation. Telemedicine accounted for fully 50% of terminations each quarter since April to June 2021. Abel...

The trial and jailing of Carla Foster for an abortion past legal term limits should be a catalyst for a new movement for abortion rights. Mobilisations and campaigning so far have been led by liberal groups like the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) and the Fawcett Society. They argue that the rest of the UK is now out of step with Northern Ireland, where a 2019 law legalising abortion put a moratorium on abortion-related criminal prosecutions. It is true dealing with abortion within criminal law stigmatises all abortions and leads to unjust sentencing like that of Carla Foster. But we...

The sentencing of Carla Foster in June, for procuring drugs to induce an abortion past the legal term limit, has been a stark reminder of how limited our reproductive rights really are. This is unjustifiable. No one should be imprisoned for ending a pregnancy, and no should be forced to stay pregnant against their wishes. Below is a model motion to submit to your Labour Party or trade union branch, calling for the decriminalisation of abortion and the abolition of term limits. Please amend as appropriate and let us know when it has been passed: office@workersliberty.org.uk MOTION: AS EARLY AS...

On 17 June abortion rights supporters marched in solidarity with a woman jailed for two years for breaking abortion laws. The protest in London was sparked when a 44-year-old mother of three was given a 28-month extended sentence earlier in week after taking abortion pills after the 24-week legal limit. She was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant at the time. Protesters marched from the Royal Courts of Justice to Whitehall, demanding release of the woman and an end to the criminalisation of abortion. The same week people in Poland marched in at least 80 towns and cities to protest the death of a...

On 12 June, a woman, Carla Foster, was sentenced to 28 months in prison for obtaining drugs to induce an abortion after the legal term limit. After taking the medication, she experienced complications and called 999. Police were called to her hospital bedside. Currently, the legal limit on having an abortion in England, Scotland and Wales is 23 weeks and six days, as per the Abortion Act of 1967. The maximum sentence under the The Offences against the Person Act, which applies in cases of illegal abortion, is life imprisonment. Compared to countries around the world like Poland and the US, it...

Iran’s dictatorship tightened restrictions on medical abortions and banned the free distribution of contraceptives in 2021 amid a moral panic around the birth-rate. Iranian women have been choosing fewer children in part due to economic crisis. This has led to public health alarm about numbers of illegal abortions. Government officials have said that each year between 300,000 to 600,000 abortions are performed in the country, and over 90% are illegal. Access to contraception and legal abortion is driving a dangerous black market. Until recently abortions could be legally performed during the...

Motion 1 (passed) Policy barriers to safe abortion include criminalisation, mandatory waiting times, the requirement that approval must be given by other people or institutions, financial charges (e.g. for some migrants), insufficient levels of provision and limits on when during pregnancy an abortion can take place. Such barriers can lead to critical delays in accessing treatment and increase risk of unsafe abortion, stigmatisation, and health complications. Some barriers are used by anti-choice individuals and organisations to push women past legal term limits to prevent legal abortion. We...

The past few months have seen the biggest strikes by nurses in the history of the NHS. The RCN began its action in December, though has (at the time of writing) suspended action around negotiations. Unison, GMB and Unite have called out paramedics. Meanwhile, the BMA’s thumping victory in its national ballot has brought Junior Doctors into the dispute. As in the broader strike wave, pay is the core issue of the dispute. With inflation soaring, and after more than a decade of pay cuts, nurses were awarded a miserable £1,400 for 2022-23. This situation, combined with the wider crisis in the NHS...