British Lawmakers Vote to Decriminalise Abortion at Any Point Until Birth

Women faced possible life imprisonment if they decided to end a pregnancy after 24 weeks under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. 

Supporters of The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children demonstrate against the proposed decriminalisation of abortion, outside the Houses of Parliament in London on June 17, 2025. Leon Neal/Getty Images

British lawmakers on June 17 voted in favor of an amendment that would decriminalise abortion in England and Wales and remove criminal penalties for women who end their pregnancies at any stage and for any reason.

Women in England and Wales face criminal charges and police investigations if they end a pregnancy after 24 weeks under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act, a Victorian-era law that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Medical professionals who assist women in obtaining an abortion outside the 24-week limit can still face prosecution. Only three convictions have been reported of an illegal abortion in 164 years, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG).

On June 17, members of Parliament voted 379–137 to back Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi’s amendment to the government’s crime and policing bill.

Having passed the House of Commons, the bill moves to the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the UK Parliament, for review. If passed by the House of Lords and granted royal assent, the bill will become law.

Some women’s health care providers and medical bodies, including the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and the RCOG, backed Antoniazzi’s amendment.

Recent changes to legislation have given women in England and Wales access to pills to be taken at home to terminate their pregnancies under 10 weeks.

In 2022, the most recent year for which data is available, 252,122 abortions were reported in England and Wales—the highest number since records began.

Carla Foster, a 45-year-old mother of three, took abortion pills mailed to her during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020 after falsely telling an abortion provider that she was only eight weeks pregnant. She was about eight months pregnant.

Foster was sentenced in June to 28 months in prison for administering drugs or using instruments to procure an abortion.

She was sentenced to 14 months in custody and the remainder on licence. The Court of Appeal later reduced her sentence.

Antoniazzi criticised the current law and said that it had been used to investigate 100 women in the past five years, including some who had given birth prematurely or had been forced into abortions by abusive partners.

“Each one of these cases is a travesty enabled by our outdated abortion law,” she told Parliament. “This is not justice, it is cruelty, and it has got to end.”

Rebecca Paul, a Conservative MP, said, “If this becomes law, fully developed babies up to term could be aborted by a woman with no consequences.”

In a June 18 statement, the Right to Life organisation said that the amendment changes the law “so it would no longer be illegal for women to perform their own abortions for any reason, including sex-selective purposes, and at any point up to and during birth, likely leading to a significant increase in the number of women performing dangerous late-term abortions at home.”

The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said before the vote that Antoniazzi’s amendment would “remove any legal restrictions on women regarding abortion.”

A woman could abort for any reason, including the sex of the baby, the organisation said, adding that this would therefore legalise abortion up to birth as long as it is self-induced.

Last year, France became the first country to explicitly include a right to terminate a pregnancy in its constitution.

​​Evgenia Filimianova and Reuters contributed to this report.