Abortion-to-birth amendments are not the solution to any of the UK’s problems

UPDATE, 6/17/25, 3:50p EST: Today, after a mere two hours of debate, the UK House of Commons voted 379 to 137 in favor of NC1. This amendment would change the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill to decriminalize self-administered abortions for any reason and at any point in pregnancy, and would not exclude abortions for sex selection.

As Reuters makes clear, “The proposal could still be altered or even voted down as it is a part of a greater bill that is making its way through the House of Commons and the unelected upper chamber of parliament [the House of Lords].”

Right to Life UK noted in a press release that amendment sponsor Tonia Antoniazzi MP “said in an interview last week that she was comfortable with women being able to abort a viable baby at 37 weeks.” But as the press release pointed out:

These changes are not backed by the general public nor by women in particular. Polling shows that 89% of the general population and 91% of women agree that gender-selective abortion should be explicitly banned by the law – and only 1% of women support introducing abortion up to birth.

Polling published this week shows widespread public support for the law change that had been proposed by Dr Caroline Johnson’s (NC106) amendment, with two-thirds of women supporting the reinstatement of in-person appointments and only 4% in favour of the status quo.

Ahead of the vote, over 1,000 medical professionals called on MPs to oppose the two abortion up to birth amendments that have been tabled to the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill and to instead reinstate in-person consultations with a medical professional prior to an abortion taking place at home, as proposed by Dr Caroline Johnson’s amendment (NC106).

Johnson’s amendment failed to pass.

NC1 will now advance to the House of Lords, where Right to Life UK says it intends to fight it “at every stage.”

6/17/25: Some UK Members of Parliament (MP) believe that the way to keep women from being arrested for committing abortions past 24 weeks of pregnancy is to entirely decriminalize abortions — up to birth, regardless of the reason — while others point out that restoring in-person visits removed by the mail-order “pills by post” scheme would remedy the issue of the arrests.

Not even the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the leading abortion provider in the UK, is fully on board with one of the abortion-to-birth amendments, supporting a different one instead.

Key Takeaways:

• Two amendments in Parliament promote abortion to birth — one seeks to unravel the Abortion Act of 1967, while the other seeks to decriminalize any and all self-administered abortions.

• Another amendment seeks to reinstate the in-person requirements for a woman to obtain the abortion pill, ending the unsafe “pills by post” mail-order abortion pill scheme instituted during the pandemic.

• The amendments are all presented as solutions to ensuring that women aren’t prosecuted and jailed for illegal abortions past the UK’s 24-weeks abortion limit.

The Backstory:

Some women, like Nicola Packer, have been charged for illegal abortion in the UK after obtaining mail-order abortion pills (or pills by post) to end their babies’ lives, not knowing that they were much further along than they believed.

Packer, who was recently acquitted after aborting her child illegally at 26 weeks by pill, says she had no idea she was two weeks past the legal limit. But obtaining abortion pills by post requires no ultrasound scans and no testing — which can lead to a gross underestimation of gestational age.

Carla Foster, however, knew she was somewhere around 30 weeks gestation when she lied to BPAS about her gestational age to obtain the abortion pill, ending the life of her preborn daughter Lily, who was estimated at 32 weeks gestation when she was stillborn —  an age when babies are old enough to survive outside the womb. Foster was sentenced to two years in prison in June of 2023.

The Details:

Stella Creasy MP has proposed NC20. Right to Life UK noted in a press release that this amendment would:

• render the 24-week time limit set out in section 1(1)(a) of the Abortion Act 1967 obsolete, permitting abortion providers to perform abortions on demand, for any reason, including sex-selective purposes, at any stage, up to birth.

• repeal sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA) and the Infant Life (Preservation) Act (ILPA)… mak[ing] key safeguards provided by the Abortion Act 1967, including the 24-week time limit, redundant throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

• remove the legal safeguard for two doctors to certify an abortion and restrictions.

• [remove the] legal deterrent against women performing their own abortions at home using abortion pills up to birth, beyond the current 10-week legal limit.

• “remov[e] key deterrents against hiding the body of a dead baby” — which could hinder police investigations into suspected infanticide as well as abortions that are “a result of trafficking or abuse.”

But BPAS doesn’t support this amendment, vaguely claiming that it is “not the right way” to bring about change in the country’s abortion law.

Instead, BPAS has thrown its support behind NC1, introduced by Tonia Antoniazzi MP — as have about 50 other pro-abortion organizations. This ‘self abortion to birth’ amendment would, as reported by Right to Life UK:

• change the law so it would no longer be illegal for women to perform their own abortions for any reason, and at any point up to and during birth.

• would not exclude sex-selective abortions.

In other words, both of these amendments promote the decriminalization of abortion to birth, but in different ways.

But while “a number of MPs pushing for the removal of abortion from the criminal law made reference to the small increase in the number of women being prosecuted for illegal abortions since 2022,” according to Right to Life UK, MP Carla Lockhart got to the heart of the issue, stating that the “pills-by-post scheme has enabled women, either dishonestly or because they have miscalculated their gestational age, to obtain abortion pills beyond the 10-week limit when at-home abortions are legal and considered safe for women — they are, of course, never safe for the baby — and even beyond the 24-week upper time limit for abortions in this country.”

This is why another MP has proposed something completely different: reinstating the in-person visits that were once required prior to the institution of the “pills by post” scheme during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Caroline Johnson MP’s bill, NC106, would require an in-person visit before a woman could receive the abortion pill, thereby decreasing the likelihood of abortion coercion as well as evaluating the preborn child’s gestational age. Though it would not change the legality of the abortion pill, it would reinstate a safeguard that was once in place.

Reality Check:

Though some MPs have claimed that allowing abortion up to birth would not increase abortions, MP Lockhart pointed out that when New Zealand decriminalized abortion to birth in 2020, “there was a 43% increase in late-term abortions, between 20 weeks gestation and birth,” compared with the year prior to decriminalization.

And the public simply isn’t in support of late-term abortion — not even women. Right to Life UK’s press release notes:

These changes are not backed by the general public nor by women in particular. Polling shows that 89% of the general population and 91% of women agree that gender-selective abortion should be explicitly banned by the law – and only 1% of women support introducing abortion up to birth.

Polling also reveals that two-thirds of UK women support reinstating in-person abortion pill requirements.

Abortion Doctors Share How The Most Common Abortion Procedures Take Place

The Bottom Line:

The abortion industry in the UK pushed heavily for the “pills by post” mail-order abortion scheme which removed in-person visits to guard against abuses. Though the government attempted to withdraw mail-order abortions in 2022, just 27 votes in Parliament kept it in place, and the abuses predicted by those opposed to abortion have begun to occur.

The abortion industry was wrong to promote the mail-order abortion pill in the past, and it is wrong now to promote decriminalizing abortion to birth. MPs in a nation that considers itself civilized and enlightened should learn the lesson they failed to learn in 2022, and put a stop to the incessant attempts to expand the government-approved killing of weaker human beings.