Tony Vaughan

I am not aware that following the decriminalisation of abortion in Northern Ireland there has been a strong current to re-criminalise it, which might be expected had a situation such as the right hon. Gentleman referred to actually occurred. It is not my understanding that that has happened. For each of the two offences I described, sentences of up to life imprisonment apply. A person is guilty of the offence of child destruction when the pregnancy is of at least 28 weeks and they commit a wilful act to cause the child’s death; it is a defence if the act was done to preserve the mother’s life. The offence of procuring miscarriage can be committed at any stage of gestation when a person uses a poison or instrument to induce miscarriage. As the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said, there are defences, variously, under the Abortion Act when two registered medical practitioners authorise abortion in an approved clinic in broadly four situations. The first is when there is a risk of injury to the mother’s physical or mental health up to 24 weeks—that was the exception expanded during covid, so that women could access pills for medical abortions at home, following a consultation, for pregnancy of up to 10 weeks.