For years, Britain has prided itself on avoiding America’s bitter abortion wars. That pride came from a “settled” law that the public took as a “pragmatic compromise.” But a recent vote in Parliament has shattered that illusion, generating the first national debate in the United Kingdom on the issue in almost 60 years.
Since 1967, abortion has been permitted in Britain for any reason up to 24 weeks (almost 6 months) — already far later than in most of Europe — with complete allowance up to birth in cases involving serious risk to the mother’s life or health, or fetal disability.
But last week, Britain’s House of Lords backed a change that decriminalizes abortion outside the existing legal framework. In plain terms, while abortions carried out through the NHS will still operate within a regulated general 24-week limit, no laws will exist to deter women from ending their pregnancies outside that system — including at full term, for any reason whatsoever.
This isn’t hypothetical. It has already happened.
In 2010, Sarah Catt, 35, from North Yorkshire, aborted her baby at 39 weeks — days before her due date. She didn’t carry out this abortion because of any medical crisis. She and her baby were perfectly healthy. Rather, she had the abortion because she was having an affair, and didn’t want her partner to find out.
Sarah was prosecuted under the law for killing her viable, late-term baby, but the changes pushed through by politicians means she will be fully pardoned — as if her actions were never immoral.
These cases are rare. But they matter, because they expose the very boundary the law once enforced — and what can happen when that boundary disappears.
The activism in support of the recent vote to change the law gained momentum in the past few years due to a small increase in the number of women investigated for potentially illegal abortions, following the introduction of pills-by-mail or “pills-by-post.” This Covid-era scheme enabled women under ten weeks pregnant to order abortion pills by phone, and take them with no in-person examination or medical supervision.
Following the pandemic, the government made the scheme permanent — despite evidence that it opened women’s health up to far greater risk. Around 20 women per day in 2020 had to be admitted to the hospital after taking the pills alone at home. Ambulance dispatches and emergency calls responding to abortion pill concerns rose by 64% following the scheme’s introduction.
Without scans or examinations, ectopic pregnancies requiring urgent medical care are missed; and crucially, gestational ages are not confirmed. Relying on women to self-report how far along their pregnancy carries a minefield of risks.
The court case of Carla Foster exposed the danger of this approach. Carla, 44, obtained abortion pills after telling a provider she was less than ten weeks pregnant. In reality, she was around 34 weeks along. She took the pills at home to end the life of her fully-developed baby in utero, went into labour, and delivered a stillborn daughter, whom she later named “Lily.”
Lily was viable, healthy and pain-capable. She could have survived if simply allowed to be delivered alive. Foster later described being “haunted” by the experience. Nobody wants to see women go through this trauma; nobody wants to see developed babies, capable of survival, being killed at this late stage. The pills-by-post scheme should have been scrapped to prevent this happening again. Instead, parliamentarians removed the legal deterrents that prevent more women from following in Carla’s footsteps.
Across most of the continent, abortion on general grounds is limited to the first trimester — typically between 12 and 15 weeks. Britain’s 24-week limit is already by far one of the most permissive. Stripping away the legal enforcement of that limit is not a minor adjustment, but a radical departure.
Perhaps most striking is how out of step this is with public opinion. While most Britons support legal abortion in some circumstances, less than 1% support abortion up to birth for any reason.
In other words, this is not the result of overwhelming democratic demand. It is a top-down redefinition of moral boundaries — one that the public has barely begun to grapple with.
Even in Britain’s typically muted political landscape, alarm bells are starting to ring. Senior figures, from Reform MP Suella Braverman to Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party, have broken the long-standing bipartisan reluctance to engage on this issue, warning that removing legal guardrails up to birth goes too far. In a country that has spent decades avoiding this debate, that shift alone is telling.
The British parliament has sent a signal that no abortion, no matter the reason, can ever be judged as immoral. The British public will now have to decide if they agree — or if it’s time to finally reopen the conversation, and look into how our laws can be better structured to support both mothers and their babies to thrive.
* * *
Lois McLatchie Miller (@LoisMcLatch) is a writer and commentator from Great Britain.
.png)
.png)
