'We are calling on the government to instruct the Lord Chancellor to use the royal prerogative of mercy and release Carla Foster,' writes the MP.
People look at me aghast when I say we don’t have legal abortion in Britain. And yet, yesterday’s news that 44-year-old mother-of-three Carla Foster was given a 28-month sentence for having an abortion after 28 weeks shows that even in 2023, women here don’t have the right to choose.
Despite abortion being first and foremost a healthcare matter, all access to the medical procedure in England and Wales rests on matters of criminal law - and it has done for centuries. While abortion was legalised in England with the Abortion Act in 1967, the 1861 law that criminalised it was not repealed, meaning that women still face life imprisonment if they carry out an abortion over the legal time limit.
Medical professionals justifiably fear this case, and the rise of intrusive police investigation into abortions could have a chilling effect on abortion access. Those who argue nothing needs changing because abortion is ‘effectively’ legal don’t recognise the real world consequences arising all round us, because it is not.
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