UK lawmakers consider decriminalizing abortion amid concern about increasing prosecution of women

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British lawmakers are preparing to statement proposals to decriminalize termination amid concerns that constabulary are utilizing antiquated laws to prosecute women who extremity their ain pregnancies

LONDON -- British lawmakers are preparing to statement proposals to decriminalize termination amid concerns that constabulary are utilizing antiquated laws to prosecute women who extremity their ain pregnancies.

The House of Commons connected Tuesday is scheduled to see 2 amendments to a broader transgression measure that would barroom the prosecution of women who instrumentality steps to extremity their pregnancies astatine immoderate stage.

Tonia Antoniazzi, the Labour subordinate of Parliament who introduced 1 of the amendments, said alteration is needed due to the fact that constabulary person investigated much than 100 women for suspected amerciable abortions implicit the past 5 years, including immoderate who suffered earthy miscarriages and stillbirths.

“This is conscionable wrong,” she said up of the debate. “It’s a discarded of taxpayers’ money, it’s a discarded of the judiciary’s time, and it’s not successful the nationalist interest.”

Doctors tin legally transportation retired abortions successful England, Scotland and Wales up to 24 weeks, and beyond that nether peculiar circumstances, specified arsenic erstwhile the beingness of the parent is successful danger. Abortion successful Northern Ireland was decriminalized successful 2019.

Changes successful the instrumentality implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic let women to person termination pills done the message and terminate their ain pregnancies astatine location wrong the archetypal 10 weeks.

That has led to a fistful of wide publicized cases successful which women were prosecuted for illegally obtaining termination pills and utilizing them to extremity their ain pregnancies aft 24 weeks oregon more.

A 2nd amendment would spell adjacent further than Antoniazzi’s proposal, barring the prosecution of aesculapian professionals and others who assistance women abort their fetuses.

Anti-abortion groups reason some measures, arguing that they volition unfastened the doorway to termination connected request astatine immoderate signifier of pregnancy.

“Unborn babies volition person immoderate remaining extortion stripped away, and women volition beryllium near astatine the mercy of abusers,” said Alithea Williams, nationalist argumentation manager for the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, which describes itself arsenic the U.K.’s biggest pro-life run group.