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This does not change the current legal limits for doctors who would continue to face legal consequences for aiding in abortions outside the legal range without due cause.
Currently, in England and Wales, abortions after 24 weeks are against the law, with some exceptions in especially harrowing circumstances like when a pregnant woman’s life is threatened. While abortion services are broadly available, women who have abortions outside the legal framework are subject to arrest, investigation, and even imprisonment.
The new amendment, which is part of a larger policing and crime bill, would remove those threats. It still needs approval from both houses of the United Kingdom Parliament to be enacted.
While in the UK surveys consistently find overwhelming public support for abortion rights. The most recent YouGov poll of April finds that 88% of its respondent sample wants a woman to have free choice.
Contrary Strategy in the US
The UK’s decision comes amid devastating abortion rights uk restrictions in the United States. After the U.S. Supreme Court gutted Roe v. Wade in 2022, several states passed extreme restrictions or outright abortion bans. And the changes have transformed the contour of reproductive rights in America.
Some abortion rights advocates in the U.K., like Louise McCudden of MSI Reproductive Choices, think the U.S. developments have sparked public and political discussions in Britain. Some protest groups outside clinics seem to have been emboldened by the tighter restrictions in the U.S.,
McCudden added. She also pointed out that women who are being investigated under the law for having an abortion right uk after 24 weeks are often vulnerable and can be survivors of abuse at home or in the sex trade or have suffered stillbirths or miscarriages.
Opposition and Ongoing Debate
The proposed change has met with resistance, even with overwhelming support. The Society for the Protection of Unborn Children condemned the vote, saying it could strip away any notion of a “restriction” on rules allowing late-term abortions. Alithea Williams, the group’s public policy manager, said it would mean “a woman being able to end a pregnancy at any stage without any criminal consequences at all.”
As this legislation makes its way through parliament, the conversation around reproductive rights in the UK is not just part of a national trend but an international one about the legal and ethical propriety of abortions.
