Ripples of the American verdict on Roe v Wade can already be seen on this side of the dam, with campaigners pointing out that British abortion laws are not as watertight as many people assume they are.
On June 24, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to reverse the landmark case that has enshrined abortion as a constitutional right for Americans since 1973. Power to legislate against it has now been returned to individual U.S. states; consequently, at least half of them are likely to restrict or completely ban access to abortion.
In Britain, we have assured ourselves that things are different and that there is no similar rollback of reproductive rights at hand. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling, protesters in the UK directed their anger at America, not Westminster. Protesters gathered outside the US embassy in London with signs reading “Our bodies, our choices”. Glastonbury was marked by actions that opposed the ruling, while politicians almost unanimously condemned a decision that Prime Minister Boris Johnson described as a “big step back”.
Yet British campaigners argue that a woman’s right to choose is far more fragile than it seems in modern Britain. Technically, abortion is still a criminal offense in England, Wales and Scotland. Most British women have access to an abortion up to 24 weeks, although the vast majority occur much earlier (89 per cent of abortions were performed in 2021 under ten weeks of pregnancy).
It may come as a surprise that abortion is technically illegal in a country where women have free access to it. Katherine O’Brien of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas) explains: “Abortion remains illegal in England, Wales and Scotland under a piece of legislation passed in 1861 called the Offenses Against the Person Act. The 1967 Abortion Act does not have abortion decriminalized, or repeal that legislation – what it did was to provide a legal defense for women and doctors who provided abortion as long as they complied with the provisions of the Act. ”
Two doctors should sign off on the procedure to say that the continuation of the pregnancy is potentially more harmful than terminating it, based on the physical or mental health of the mother, the child if it was born, or any existing children.
“As it stands now, abortion is still illegal under a law passed the same year that the American Civil War began, long before women had the right to vote,” adds Dr. Jonathan Lord, a consultant gynecologist and spokesman of the Royal College of Obstetrics at and Gynecology (RCOG). “What happened in America is shocking, because it shows that even reproductive rights enshrined in the constitution can be taken away after 50 years.”