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An amendment to decriminalise abortion has passed the House of Commons, bringing it closer to law.
The amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill was brought by Welsh Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi and proposed that women would no longer face prosecution if they end a pregnancy after 24 weeks or without approval from two doctors.
379 MPs voted in favour of the amendment on Tuesday evening, while 137 voted against it.
Under the amendment, medical professionals would not be exempt from prosecution, and the legal 24-week limit would remain in place.
Abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy across England and Wales was legalised through David Steel’s 1967 Abortion Act.
But campaigners have raised concerns that the law needs to change, claiming that more than 100 women have been prosecuted for a suspected abortion in the last decade.
Currently, abortions beyond 24 weeks are only legal where there is a serious risk to the woman’s life or health or a severe fetal abnormality.
Under the current law, women can be prosecuted for carrying out an abortion after 24 weeks into their pregnancy, or before 24 weeks without the approval of two doctors.
These cases have seen women investigated for stillbirths or giving birth prematurely.
Concerns over the future of the right to an abortion have emerged in recent years after the US Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade.
On Tuesday, MPs were given a free vote on the amendment to decriminalise abortion, allowing parliamentarians to vote according to their conscience, rather than along party lines.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Antoniazzi began by referencing the story of Nicola Parker, who was arrested in hospital by uniformed officers after she was accused of carrying out an illegal abortion.
Giving examples of other women who have been prosecuted for abortion offences, Antoniazzi said, “each one of these cases is a travesty enabled by our outdated abortion law”.
The Welsh Labour MP also expressed dismay at the “abuse” she and fellow Labour MP Stella Creasy had faced ahead of today’s vote. Creasy had tabled her own amendment seeking to go further than Antoniazzai’s to decriminalise abortion, but it was defeated.
Antoniazzi said that her colleague Creasy “had a terrible experience” ahead of the vote and was “unable to walk into Parliament because of the abuse that she was having outside and the pictures that were put out there”.
“It was completely it was just unforgivable.”
Ahead of the vote, Antoniazzi’s amendment had been backed by more than 170 cross-party MPs and had the support of the British Medical Association, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
The Labour MP for Walthamstow, Creasy, also spoke about her amendment to the bill, which also aimed to decriminalise abortion. The amendment was not put to a vote, as Antoniazzi’s amendment was passed.
Creasy claimed during the debate in the Commons that true decriminalisation could only be introduced through her amendment.
Creasy’s amendment went further than Antoniazzi’s and sought to make abortion a human right and would remove criminal penalties for both women and medical professionals involved in abortions, remove the 24-week limit, and ensure those who undergo a late-term abortion – including up to birth – are not subject to prison sentences.
The Labour MP said that her amendment “is primarily about the principle whether you think abortion is a human right, and how we apply that principle to our laws”.
