Two women in the UK are facing life sentences in prison for illegal abortions, while one woman is already serving a two-year sentence.
Abortion in the UK is technically illegal, according to the 1967 Abortion Act, but there are some caveats to this.
Criminal charges can not be applied to abortion so long as it takes place within 23 weeks and six days of gestation.
The abortion must be approved by two doctors who will determine that the pregnancy would be harmful to the mother’s physical or mental health, or that the foetus would be born with a severe disability.
The only exception to this rule is when there is evidence of significant risk to the mother’s life, or evidence of fatal foetal abnormality.
Why can women face criminal charges for abortion?
Abortion in the UK is technically illegal unless carried out under the stipulations outlined above.
If abortion is carried out later than 24 weeks, it is considered illegal under the 1967 Abortion Act.
There are two main types of abortion in the UK – a medical abortion, which is taking medicine to end pregnancy, and a surgical aborton, which involves a medical procedure.
Medical abortions see women take two pills at two separate times to administer the abortion. Before the pandemic, if the woman was less than 10 weeks pregnant, she would take the first pill under doctor supervision, and the second at home.
This practice altered to taking both pills at home when the pandemic hit in 2020. MPs voted earlier this year that the “pills by post” scheme, which it was later dubbed, will continue after there were initial plans to scrap it at the end of August.
Who are the women facing criminal charges for abortion in the UK?
There are currently two women in the UK facing potential life sentences for administering allegedly illegal abortions, and one woman already serving a two-year sentence.
In July, a 25-year-old Oxford woman pleaded not guilty to administering an abortion pill illegally. Prosecutors said the unnamed woman used labour-inducing medication when she was 31 weeks pregnant in January 2021.
Doctors at John Radcliffe Hospital allegedly found two tablets in her body after the baby was born during an emergency C-section. The baby survived.
According to Oxford Mail, the women pleaded not guilty to administering a poison with intent to procure a miscarriage. She is due to stand trial in February next year.
The second woman, 44, appeared at North Staffordshire Magistrates Court on Tuesday 19 July, less than a week after the first woman’s court hearing.
She was charged with “intentional destruction of a viable unborn child”, which is an offence that sits under the 1929 Infant Life (Preservation) Act.
The woman is accused of taking an abortion pill at 28 weeks pregnant, four weeks after the legal limit of abortion in England, Wales and Scotland. Her case has now been sent to Crown Court, and faces a possible sentencing of 160 years in prison.
These cases follow an anonymous woman referred to as Laura, whose story was shared with The Sunday Times last weekend.
Laura is serving a two-year prison sentence for aborting a foetus when she was 30 weeks pregnant. She says she was in an abusive relationship and thought she was only eight to 10 weeks pregnant when she purchased the pills online.
