Members of the House of Lords are seeking to prevent the imposition of an extreme abortion regime in England and Wales.
Earlier this year the House of Commons voted in favour of an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that removed all legal sanctions to carrying out an abortion after the 20-week limit. If it becomes law, the amendment will effectively legalise abortion up to the point of birth.
As well as removing the amendment, peers are also looking at reintroducing the requirement that those seeking an abortion receive an in-person consultation with a medical professional. This requirement was removed during the Covid lockdowns and led to the 'pills-by-post' scheme that allowed at home abortions without medical supervision.
The scheme has been criticised following a number of serious abuses, including one man who was sent to jail after giving his pregnant girlfriend abortion medication he had obtained via the pills-by-post scheme. This resulted in the woman losing the baby and she has not been able to conceive since.
In another harrowing case, a woman was prosecuted after misleading abortion providers into sending her abortion pills by claiming she was only seven weeks pregnant when she was in fact between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant. Critics of the pills-by-post service argue that the tragedy could have been avoided if there had been an in-person consultation.
In the Lords, the Crime and Policing Bill came up for debate at Second Reading. Of the 20 peers who spoke on the abortion amendment, 13 were against it and seven in favour.
Baroness Monckton has tabled an amendment that would undo the Commons attempt to remove legal sanctions from abortion. Her colleague, Baroness Stroud has also tabled an amendment requiring in-person consultations for those seeking an abortion.
Baroness Monckton said, “This is an extreme social change for which there is no public pressure or demand, and could have tragic consequences for women, as well as leading to increased numbers of abortions of viable babies.
“This radical clause was added to the Bill after less than an hour of debate by MPs, and without the necessary scrutiny required for an issue of such seriousness. Whatever one’s views on abortion, this is not how responsible laws are made."
Baroness Stroud, talking of her own amendment, said that the rise in prosecutions of women performing illegal late-term abortions was a direct result of the pills-by-post scheme.
“The solution to such cases is not to make matters worse by removing the legal deterrent against women performing their own at-home abortions up to birth, which would likely endanger women further, but to reinstate in-person consultations”.
"I, and many others, warned of the dangers of the ‘pills by post’ scheme when it was introduced. Sadly, those warnings have come true. My amendment would ensure medical professionals can accurately assess a woman’s gestational age, any health risks and the risk of coercion before abortion pills are prescribed.”
