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The law on abortion—time to re-think?

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19 March 2020 / Nicholas Whitehorn , Letitia Egan
Issue: 7879 / Categories: Features , Human rights
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Letitia Egan & Nicholas Whitehorn review the evidence for reforming the abortion law in the UK
  • The anachronistic wording of s 58 OAPA 1861 renders the mens rea dangerously unclear and, worse still, risks criminalising vulnerable women.

For most parts of the UK, the issue of abortion appears to be a settled debate, but in reality it is a topic which continues to stir passions. This is something Labour leadership hopeful Rebecca Long-Bailey discovered recently when drawing the opprobrium of her fellow candidates for stating that the legal limit for terminating disabled foetuses should be reduced (https://bit.ly/39O54Aj).

Significantly, in 2019 renewed political focus led to sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 being repealed in Northern Ireland, legalising abortion there for the first time. While abortion in prescribed circumstances has been legal in the rest of the UK since 1967, a recent case at first instance R v W & Others, unreported, November 2019, St Albans Crown Court,

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