Two pro-life bills to be introduced in the House of Lords

Two new pro-life Private Members’ bills will be tabled in the House of Lords, one requiring abortion complications to be reported, and the other calling for clearer legal protections for abortion survivors. The bills, drawn in the Lords ballot, will be introduced by Lord Moylan and Baroness O’Loan in June. 

Key Takeaways:

• The Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill will have its first reading on June 9, and the Infant (Born Alive) Protection Bill on June 11.

• Data suggests the number of complications from abortion are higher than what is currently being reported.

• The rise of at-home abortions has led to fears that more women could potentially give birth to living, viable babies.

The Details:

Lord Moylan’s Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill is scheduled to come before the House of Lords after being drawn 14th in the Lords’ Private Members’ Bill ballot, with its First Reading scheduled for June 9. Baroness O’Loan’s Infant (Born Alive) Protection Bill was drawn at number 17, and is supposed to have its First Reading on June 11.

Although the bills’ entire contents have not yet been disclosed to the public, a government review released in November 2023 revealed that abortion complications may be considerably undercounted in yearly statistics, which depend  on reports from abortionists.

The review, conducted by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, evaluated Hospital Episode Statistics for England from 2017 to 2021, and found that its figures hinted at a higher complication rate than the one documented through the Abortion Notification System and published in the yearly abortion data.

The review also disclosed that the complication rate based on Abortion Notification System (ANS) data averaged 1.52 per 1,000 abortions between 2017 and 2021. In contrast, the analysis of Hospital Episode Statistics over the same period produced a rate of 4.06 per 1,000 — over 2.6 times higher than the figure reported in the annual abortion statistics.

When incomplete abortions were also included in the hospital data analysis, the rate rose to 18.16 per 1,000 abortions, which was nearly 11.9 times higher than the rate calculated from the ANS data, which does not factor in incomplete abortions.

The disparity in reported complication rates was significantly higher among women under 20 versus the overall population. In this younger group, the complication rate derived from HES data was 4.43 times higher than the rate calculated from ANS data, whereas for the general population, it was 2.67 times higher. When incomplete abortions were also included in the HES analysis, the gap increased even more: for women under 20, the HES-based complication rate was 17.43 times higher than the ANS figure, as opposed to an 11.95-fold difference in the general population. 

The review also discovered that complications occurring after a patient’s discharge, or after the relevant reporting form had already been handed over to the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), were often not documented by abortionists. The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) pointed out that, as of the 2022 review, there was no proof that abortion providers were notifying the DHSC to revise records when patients subsequently reported complications after submitting report forms. 

Additionally, the review observed that complications may be underreported in cases where one or both abortion medications are taken at home. Under such circumstances, the individual completing the HSA4 form is unlikely to be aware of any complications encountered after the procedure, reducing the likelihood that these events are captured in writing. 

Zoom In:

After a legislative change in the previous parliament removed criminal penalties for women committing their own abortions for any reason and at any stage up to birth, Baroness O’Loan introduced the Infant (Born Alive) Protection Bill to outline the legal safeguards granted to babies who are born alive after surviving an abortion attempt.

The amendment to the law, implemented earlier this year through the Crime and Policing Act 2026, is expected to give rise to a notable rise in women carrying out high-risk, late-term abortions at home, potentially putting more lives at risk. 

This legislative change is also expected to result in a spike in the number of viable infants being aborted beyond the 24-week legal limit, including at stages when they can survive outside the womb. 

Discussing Lord Moylan’s Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill being drawn in the ballot, Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, stated: 

A Government review in 2023 revealed that abortion complication rates are likely much higher than has been previously reported in the annual abortion statistics, which are based on reporting from abortion providers. In this new parliamentary session, the Government needs to urgently introduce measures to ensure that abortion complications data is accurately collected and reliably reported moving forward.

While it is rare for Lords Private Members’ Bills to become law, this Bill will ensure that the issue of complication rate underreporting is put on the radar and debated extensively in Parliament, the media and wider society.

This will help raise the profile of this major issue and put pressure on the Government to ensure that abortion complications data is accurately collected and reliably reported for years to come.

Similarly, Robinson said:

Babies born alive following an abortion should receive the same standard of care as any other baby born at the same gestation.

Sadly, the fact that it is no longer illegal for women to perform their own abortions for any reason, including sex-selective purposes, and at any point up to and during birth, means that late-term abortions outside a clinical setting are far more likely.

Such babies need the full protection of the law.

At the start of each new parliamentary session, members of the House of Lords can submit a Private Members’ Bill for entry into a ballot, with the hope that it will be chosen and given enough parliamentary time to pass into law.  No proposed legislation on assisted suicide was selected in the ballot, and no measures supporting abortion were chosen.

The Bottom Line:

The two bills come at a time when worries are rising over the accuracy of abortion complication data in the United Kingdom and the legal status of children who survive abortion attempts. While Private Members’ Bills rarely become law on their own, their value lies in sparking public debate and putting neglected pro-life issues on the parliamentary agenda.

In this case, the bills on abortion complications and babies born alive after abortion single out two questions that many lawmakers would rather gloss over: whether Britain is accurately recording the harms of abortion, and whether it is doing enough to safeguard infants who survive it.  The first bill calls for transparency, and the second for accountability and care. Given that abortion is erroneously framed as “healthcare” by mainstream British society, the public deserves honest data, while every child who is born alive deserves protection, instead of abandonment leading to death.