Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi told MPs Packer was “taken from her hospital bed” by police to face the “indignity” of a four-and-a-half-year legal process. “This is not justice, this is cruelty, and it has got to end,” she said.
Antoniazzi’s amendment was therefore aimed at women using at-home abortion pills, as criminal sanctions will still apply to medical professionals.
But a letter by more than 1,000 medical professionals, arranged by the anti-abortion campaign group Right to Life, argued it would make dangerous late-term abortions “possible up to birth for any reason,” including choosing the child’s sex.
Liberal Democrat MP Angus MacDonald put it more bluntly in Tuesday’s debate — asking what would happen if a woman carrying a baby at full term “decides it is an inconvenience.”
Antoniazzi was “appalled” by these suggestions. “This is not about abortion up to 40 weeks,” she told POLITICO. “It’s not about changing the Abortion Act. It’s not about selective sex. It’s just not all of those things that we are getting bombarded with in our inboxes, and it’s a misrepresentation, and it’s really, really unfair to those women that have been in the criminal system.”
A ‘song and dance’
Labour MP Stella Creasy also wanted to decriminalize abortion, but took a different approach. She proposed a more far-reaching amendment — which did not come to a vote for procedural reasons — to repeal the 1861 law entirely and establish a new framework in its place, including enshrining abortion access as a human right.