Ms Stella Creasy

I think we all agree that there are concerns about vulnerable people and abortion law in this country, but we disagree about how to address them. I propose new clause 20 as a way to address those concerns and recognise that the issue of abortion access is increasingly under attack, not just in our country but around the world. If we think that we face these challenges because we have outdated laws in this country, why would we retain them in any shape or form rather than learning from best practice around the world for all our constituents? To start, let me put on the record that I take seriously all the concerns raised across the House about abortion. I recognise that this is a complex issue, I hear strongly the stories about investigations and prosecutions, and I want to see change, but I also recognise that change does not come without consequences. New clause 20, therefore, is based on what is good abortion law—what many of us have worked on. It is based on what the sector itself used to say mattered, which was that abortion law in England and Wales should recognise developments in modern abortion law in Northern Ireland, delivering on the promise we made in this place in 2019 that abortion was a human right, that safe care was a human right for women, and that we should see a progression of minimum human rights standards on abortion, including through the proposals of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. I want to start with how the new clause would do that. I want to be clear that only this new clause would provide for decriminalisation. Decriminalisation, as defined by Marie Stopes, means removing abortion from the criminal law so that it is no longer governed by both the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 and the Infant Life Preservation Act 1929, because that would protect both clinicians and those who are at threat of criminal prosecution. Decriminalisation would not impact the regulations on safe medical use, medical conduct, safeguarding—I recognise that is a serious concern—or the distribution of medicines, and neither would it stop tackling those people who seek to use abortion as a form of abuse or coercion. I want to explain how, In decriminalising and removing the laws that have caused those problems, the new clause would keep the 1967 Act not as a list of reasons why someone would be exempted from prosecution but as a guide to how abortion should be provided. Many of us in the House would recognise the shock for our constituents that abortion is illegal in theory and that the guidelines in the 1967 Act are the settled will of this place. To resolve any regulatory challenges, the new clause would require the Secretary of State to comply only with sections 85 and 86 of CEDAW—the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women. Those sections are about minimum, not maximum, standards of care, and that is only if the Secretary of State believes there appears to be an incongruence that needs to be addressed.