Abortion Rights Model Motion template
This branch applauds the landmark vote to legalise abortion in Argentina, a beacon of hope to pro-choice activists across Latin America fighting for abortion rights, and at the same time sends solidarity to pro-choice demonstrators in Poland on the streets in unprecedented numbers against the almost complete ban on abortion that became law on 27 January 2021.
This branch notes:
- In Britain, the 1967 Abortion Act gave women and pregnant people access to abortion – but only under specific grounds and only if signed off by two doctors. The Offences against the Person Act 1861 which made abortion a criminal offence is still on the statute book. The situation in Northern Ireland is now quite different: They no longer have the 1861 Act, and they never had 1967 Act – so abortion is effectively decriminalised in the North but women still face an appalling lack of access to abortion services.
- Today, medical advancements mean women and pregnant people can safely access abortion by taking two pills. This regimen is now on the World Health Organisation Essential medicines list for safe abortion. Abortion care therefore no longer needs to be carried out in a clinical setting – in fact, the second abortion pill can be taken at home under the Abortion Act in Scotland, Wales and England.
- The temporary measure during the pandemic to allow both abortion pills to be taken at home has been a great success. Covid-19 has shown there is no legitimate or medical reason to deny the use of telemedicine in abortion services going forward.
- However, although the ways women and pregnant people can access abortion has changed, the criminal law remains. Within the current criminal law, women and pregnant people in Britain could face 12 years in prison for using abortion pills purchased online. A doctor could face 12 years in prison for providing safe abortion care without a second doctor’s approval. A nurse could face 12 years in prison for providing medical abortion on their best clinical judgement without the legal grounds first being signed off by two doctors. These criminal sanctions are completely unnecessary for highly regulated UK healthcare such as abortion. Trapped within the legal framework of criminal law, abortion care is being regarded unlike any other medical procedure available in the UK today. By situating abortion in criminal law with the need for two doctors to sign off legal grounds, rather than being situated wholly within medical regulation, we are saying to abortion care professionals – particularly to nursing staff – that we don’t trust their individual clinical judgement or competence. No other healthcare professionals are made to work within these limits.
- Medical organisations in favour of decriminalisation include: Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Royal College of Midwives, Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing.
- Parliamentary groups are also in favour of the decriminalisation of abortion. The All Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development has called for the complete decriminalisation throughout the UK.
- In 2017, a majority in the House of Commons were in favour of decriminalising abortion in England and Wales with MPs across all political parties voting to pass Diana Johnson MP’s Reproductive Health Access to Termination bill through its first reading.
This branch believes:
- There is a solution to all the issues highlighted above, and that is to decriminalise abortion. Healthcare regulation will always and should always stand. But the only thing being achieved by the current law is to restrict and stigmatise both those who request an abortion and the healthcare professionals who provide that care in good faith.
- Decriminalisation would mean that abortion services are regulated in the same way as other medical practices. We need to allow doctors and nurses to deliver best practice without fear of being criminalised. For women and pregnant people, decriminalisation would mean empowering them to make their own informed healthcare choices. Women and pregnant people would no longer have their bodies ruled over by a law enacted when Queen Victoria was on the throne.
There is already a wide consensus on this issue. Now we must all come together to decriminalise abortion in the UK.
This branch resolves:
- That we use the structures within our union to ensure members are kept up to date with the campaign for decriminalisation.
- To publicise the Abortion Rights campaign and encourage branches to affiliate, in line with national policy.
- To encourage members to write to their MPs in support of the decriminalisation of abortion.