The British parliament on Tuesday voted to decriminalize abortion in England and Wales to stop a growing number of women from being investigated by police for terminating pregnancies under legislation dating back to the mid-19th century.
Abortions have been legal in England and Wales for almost 60 years, but only up to 24 weeks and with the approval of two doctors. Women can face criminal charges if they end a pregnancy after 24 weeks under the Victorian-era law that carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
Although criminal convictions for breaking the law are rare, the number of prosecutions has increased following the COVID-19 pandemic, when a change in the law allowed abortion pills to be taken at home to end pregnancies within 10 weeks of conception.
Photo: Reuters
In a free vote in parliament, when politicians were not ordered to vote along party lines, lawmakers gave an initial approval by 379 votes to 137 for an amendment to stop prosecutions of women who end pregnancies in all circumstances.
Medical professionals who assist women in obtaining an abortion outside the 24-week limit could still face prosecution.
The proposal could still be altered or even voted down as it is a part of a greater bill that is making its way through the British House of Commons and the unelected upper chamber of parliament.
Labour Party lawmaker Tonia Antoniazzi, who proposed the amendment, said the law had been used to investigate 100 women in the past five years, including some who had given birth prematurely or had been forced into abortions by abusive partners.
“Each one of these cases is a travesty enabled by our outdated abortion law,” she told parliament. “This is not justice, it is cruelty and it has got to end.”
The vote was part of a broader government criminal justice bill that if passed in its entirety would bring the abortion laws in England and Wales in line with other Western countries including France, Canada and Australia.
The amendment would revoke parts of a law passed in 1861 by a then all-male parliament that made deliberately ending a pregnancy a crime and stipulated that those who carried it out could be “kept in penal servitude for life.”
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS