The clause – clause 191 – was introduced by Tonia Antoniazzi MP in the Commons after just 46 minutes of speeches. There was no prior consultation with the public, no Committee Stage scrutiny, no evidence sessions and no impact assessment.
Baroness Monckton has written that the clause would remove “all remaining legal invigilation of women regarding abortion, allowing a mother-to-be to abort her baby, up to full term, for any reason at all, including its sex”.
The clause is “a reckless and radical proposal, with implications both for the mental and physical health of the mother, and disastrous consequences for the child”, Monckton wrote.
The peer raised concerns that allowing a mother to end the life of her unborn child for any reason at any time would likely increase the prevalence of women suffering coercive late-term abortions, due to abusive partners who may highlight the lack of legal consequences.
Monckton argued that this proposal “would, in effect, reintroduce the backstreet abortion, as women beyond the current 24-week legal limit are in effect to be encouraged to abort at home, on their own, using pills ordered through the post, which are not designed for use outside of a clinical context beyond ten weeks”.
Baroness Monckton stated that this decriminalisation clause would “remove the few remaining legal protections for unborn children, one in three of whom are already aborted in this country”.
“Is this what we really want, as a nation? That we descend into this moral darkness, protecting neither the mother nor the child?” she added.
Baroness Monckton, along with other female Peers, tabled an amendment to the Bill at Committee Stage that would remove clause 191 from the Crime and Policing Bill.