England and Wales are one step closer to scrapping a 165-year-old law that has seen women investigated, prosecuted, and jailed for ending their own pregnancies. Here’s everything you need to know.
Last night, the House of Lords voted to keep abortion reform in the Crime and Policing Bill, backing a clause that would mean women in England and Wales can no longer be investigated, arrested, or jailed for ending their own pregnancies. Peers also voted to pardon women who already have police records for doing exactly that.
If you’ve seen the headlines and aren’t quite sure what any of it means, or why it’s such a big deal, you’re not alone. Abortion law in this country is genuinely confusing, because it was last properly written in the Victorian era and hasn’t kept up with, well, anything. Here’s a breakdown of everything you need to know.
First: why is this even necessary? Isn’t abortion already legal?
Yes and no. Abortion has technically been a criminal offence in England and Wales since 1861, under the Offences Against the Person Act. What the Abortion Act 1967 did was create a legal exception to that criminal law, allowing abortion to take place under specific circumstances: before 24 weeks, with the sign-off of two doctors, at an approved clinic or NHS hospital.
Outside those conditions, abortion remains a crime that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. That’s right; life in prison, under a law written before women had the right to vote, passed without parliamentary debate, at a time when society had not yet developed the vocabulary to discuss sex openly at all.
The 1967 Act made legal abortion widely accessible, and for decades that was broadly where things sat. The criminal law was technically still there, but prosecutions under it were rare.
What changed in recent years?
One change was that pills-by-post happened. During the Covid-19 pandemic, women were permitted to consult a doctor by phone or video and receive abortion medication in the post, for pregnancies up to ten weeks. It was a practical, evidence-based, compassionate policy that was made permanent in 2022. Around 200,000 people a year have an abortion in England and Wales; telemedicine transformed access, particularly for those in rural areas, those with caring responsibilities, and those in abusive relationships.
But it also meant that for the first time, women could manage early abortions at home, which opened a door to prosecution.
Since 2020, around 100 women have faced police investigations, six have faced court, and one has been sent to prison on suspicion of illegal abortion offences. Many of those investigations were into women who had done nothing wrong at all. Some investigations were into women who had had miscarriages.
The most well-known case is that of Carla Foster, a mother of three who was jailed in 2023 for taking abortion pills at 32 to 34 weeks of pregnancy, later released on appeal. But as we reported here at The New Feminist, the situation went further still. The National Police Chiefs’ Council issued guidance instructing officers to examine women’s digital devices, including period tracking apps, when investigating pregnancy loss. Police were searching phones, requesting medical records, and testing women for the presence of abortion drugs after unexplained pregnancy loss. The Victorian law was being actively enforced in 2025.
So what did Parliament do?
In June 2025, Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi brought an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill. MPs voted 379 to 137 on a free vote to disapply the criminal law related to abortion from women acting in relation to their own pregnancy. That amendment became Clause 208 of the Bill.
This clause removes women from the criminal law around abortion. However, it does not change the 24-week time limit, the rules around abortion provision or the fact that doctors and providers still work within the existing medical and legal framework. It only ends women being investigated and prosecuted for ending their own pregnancies, and makes sure that women who end their own pregnancies will no longer face the threat of life imprisonment under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.
The Bill then moved to the House of Lords, where opponents tried to strip the clause out entirely.
That’s what happened last night?
Yes. Peers voted down amendments that would have removed the clause, allowing the legislation to pass unchanged. The vote to keep decriminalisation was 185 to 148. A separate attempt to reinstate mandatory in-person consultations before abortion pills could be prescribed, which would have effectively ended pills-by-post, was rejected 191 to 119. An attempt to ban telemedicine for under-18s was also dismissed, 163 votes to 68.
Then came the pardon vote. Baroness Thornton tabled an amendment to extend the protections backwards, to women who already have records. The upper chamber supported it by 180 votes to 58. The amendment applies to women who were convicted and to those who were cautioned, and it would remove women’s details from police systems regardless of the outcome of their case.
This matters enormously, for a reason that hadn’t received much attention before last night. Abortion offences are classed as violent crimes, meaning they permanently appear in an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check. A woman who was arrested, investigated, and never charged still has that on her record. It shows up when she applies for jobs and when she tries to travel. For the rest of her life, she carries a marker for something that should never have been a crime. The pardon vote addresses that directly.
As Heidi Stewart, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, put it: these laws have been used against some of the most vulnerable women and girls, including victims of domestic abuse, human trafficking, and children, and even those who experienced natural pregnancy loss could find records retained on police systems and disclosed in background checks.
Does this mean abortion is now fully decriminalised?
Not quite yet. The Bill still needs to return to the House of Commons for MPs to consider the Lords’ amendments. Royal Assent is expected around mid-April. The pardons, which involve a more complex administrative process, will take longer to come into effect.
Assuming the Commons doesn’t unpick what the Lords passed last night, England and Wales will join countries including France, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, where abortion is treated as a healthcare matter rather than a criminal one.
What about Scotland?
Scotland is a separate jurisdiction and was not covered by this legislation. Campaigns for similar reform are underway there, but the law has not changed.
Why does it matter right now, globally?
Watching abortion rights be dismantled in the United States has sharpened how many people in the UK think about this. The 1861 Act has been used in ways that mirror what reproductive rights campaigners warned would happen under American abortion bans: women investigated after miscarriages, digital data weaponised against them, healthcare workers put in an impossible position. England and Wales have been doing a version of this, but with less attention, for years.
Last night’s vote doesn’t guarantee the law will change. The Commons still has to hold the line. But it’s the most significant moment for reproductive rights in this country in a generation, and it’s worth understanding exactly what it means.
Photo from Depositphotos
I was coerced into taking morning after pill, it didn’t work. Then I was bullied for months because I wouldn’t have an abortion, afterwards he took it out on my daughter and did his best to avoid financial support. I raised my child with little input from the dad who spent the following years controlling, criticising , gaslighting, harassing, keeping me in constant state of fear. At early teens years he managed to slowly brainwash our son and on getting into a relationship with a therapist, managed to coerce our autistic son ( the sweetest soul you could ever meet) and control him, turning him into a tool for vengeance. I reached out to lots of people, no one helped. I haven’t seen or heard from my son in nearly 6 years he’s 21 next month. As far as I’m aware feminists don’t give a toss about parental alienation, the level of abuse suffered by the child, the mother and siblings, the resulting self harm especially with the alienated child and siblings. Its a devastatingly real thing, it happens all the time but you are all too busy with other things that are more right on.