Calls for impact assessment on abortion-up-to-birth clause

A cross-party group of MPs and peers have called upon the federal government to delay the implantation of the controversial abortion clause within the Crime and Policing Bill until a full impact assessment can happen.

Clause 246 of the bill effectively legalises abortion as much as the purpose of birth. While it doesn’t change the present 24-week limit at which an abortion can legally happen, it does remove any legal sanction for a girl aborting their child after this point, for any reason.

While doctors will only be permitted to perform an abortion throughout the 24-week limit, there can be nothing stopping a girl taking matters into her own hands after this point. Campaigners have noted that the clause puts women safety in jeopardy, arguing that it encourages the ‘back-street abortions’ so often raised by pro-abortion campaigners.

In an open letter to Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, and health minister Wes Streeting, the cross-party group called not only for an impact assessment, but fully updated guidance for police, prosecutors and doctors, all of which ought to be approved by each Houses of Parliament.

The letter said that as things stand, Clause 246 incorporates quite a lot of ambiguities that ought to be clarified before it becomes law.

The signatories asked what should occur if medical professionals got here to the help of a girl suffering complications from a self-administered abortion and located that the newborn was still alive, the query being whether or not they should they permit it to live or assist in completing the abortion.

Questions were also asked about how the police could tell the difference between infanticide and a really late-term abortion. The recent clause, the signatories, noted, may lead to cases of infanticide going undetected.

Among the 79 signatories were figures from Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and Reform UK.

Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, “Bringing the abortion as much as birth clause into force before a correct impact assessment has been produced, and before police, prosecutors and healthcare professionals have been given clear guidance on these and other serious issues, could be deeply irresponsible.”

She added, “There are actually almost 300,000 abortions every 12 months on this country. Britain’s abortion deadline is already double that of essentially the most common abortion limit amongst EU countries. And yet Parliament has just voted for even fewer safeguards for girls and fewer protections for the unborn, even late in pregnancy.

“The law change would likely result in the lives of many more women being endangered due to the risks involved with self-administered late-term abortions and likewise tragically result in an increased variety of viable babies’ lives being ended well beyond the 24-week abortion deadline and beyond the purpose at which they might have the option to survive outside the womb.”