Backstreet DIY abortion is poised to return to Britain. That will b the result if the House of Lords backs the new law to decriminalise abortion, which has alrady passed the Commons
The greatest danger comes from Antonia Antoniazzi MP’s Clause 191 — which allows a woman to kill her unborn baby at any stage of pregnancy without sanction.
MPs backed this radical and extreme proposal by 379 votes to 137, with only two hours of debate. They also rejected a proposal to reinstate in-person consultations under the pills-by-post scheme.
Spoeaking in the Lords, Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (pictured) noted: “a supreme irony that those who claim to support legal abortion on the basis that the alternative would be unsafe — illegal abortions — are now proposing that women can perform such illegal abortions, outside the terms of the Abortion Act, in an unsafe environment”.
She warned that a change in the law “would, in effect, reintroduce backstreet abortion”, opening up the way for women to abort their children “at home, on their own, without the prospect of any subsequent investigation, using pills not designed for use outside of a clinical context beyond 10 weeks”.
The Peer said the Government’s Crime and Policing Bill “was not designed, and is not an appropriate forum, to bring further widening of already highly permissive abortion laws. It is astonishing that the Committee is being asked to consider such a far-reaching law with so little prior scrutiny.”
Echoing Lady Monckton’s concerns, Baroness O’Loan feared that if the amendment passed it risked sending a message that DIY abortions are safe. Consequently, she added, despite being decriminalised, women “may die or face life-changing injuries”.