I had an abortion – it isn’t a criminal act, it’s healthcare

For many, getting pregnant is easy. Whether the trials and tribulations of life mean you forget to take your pill one day, or the condom splits, or another form of contraception fails, the magic of biology means many unexpectedly fall pregnant in their lives.

Of course, the limitations of contraception are not the only reason you may suddenly find yourself pregnant. Many choose to eschew hormonal contraception because they don’t want to grapple with its grim psychological and physical side effects, and just feel like the pay-off isn’t worth it. The risk, of course, is that they are far more likely to wind up pregnant.

Not that they’d be completely safe if they did use contraception. The NHS spells this out in no uncertain terms: “No contraceptive is 100 per cent reliable,” it states on its website. “And some can have side effects.”

For all the above and much, much more, the notion that women and people with wombs should be criminalised for inadvertently winding up with an unwanted pregnancy and seeking an abortion feels unforgiving, punitive and cruel.

Yet we live in a world where this is routine. Total abortion bans exist in the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Laos, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti and Senegal. Meanwhile, around three dozen different nations only permit abortions in cases where the woman’s life is at risk, including Nigeria, Mexico, Iran, Venezuela, Myanmar, Afghanistan and Brazil.

But what about here in the UK? It is often mistakenly assumed the battle on abortion rights has been won due to pregnancy terminations being legal here. However, Monday’s headlines involving a woman who has been sentenced to more than two years in prison for taking abortion pills after the legal cut-off is symptomatic of the grave issues which have long pervaded abortion care here.

Carla Foster, a 44-year-old mother-of-three, got hold of the abortion pills under the government’s “pills by post” initiative for unwanted pregnancies up to 10 weeks. Doctors concluded the aforementioned woman was 32 to 34 weeks pregnant at the time. This is substantially beyond the 24-week legal limit for an abortion, apart from when the mother’s life is at risk, or the child will have a severe disability. Neither situation applied to this woman.

The judge who sentenced her, Justice Pepperall, said the woman felt “very deep and genuine remorse”, was “racked with guilt” and still had nightmares over her actions. “I also accept that you had a very deep emotional attachment to your unborn child and that you are plagued by nightmares and flashbacks to seeing your dead child’s face,” Justice Pepperall said. To many, this will seem like punishment enough. But others take a different view, wholeheartedly agreeing with the prison sentence Foster has been given as they branded her a “murderer” online.

This was a word I had levied at me from anti-abortion ideologues online after I wrote about my nightmare struggle to access services in the UK in a lengthy piece for The Independent last spring. Overwhelmed services nearly pushed me into having a surgical abortion (which are far riskier), with a provider telling me they were receiving 1,000 abortion requests a day. What’s more, it was also suggested I travel hundreds of miles from London to Doncaster or Liverpool.

But cries of “murderer” weren’t the only criticism I faced. While I had many messages from people thanking me for the piece, others told me my abortion had irreversibly and dangerously damaged my body, as well as telling me I should not have had sex, or should be better at using contraception, or that I should have remained abstinent altogether.

These views might sound fringe to some, but in reality they are part and parcel of mainstream anti-abortion sentiment. Troubling opinions held by anti-abortion activists range from linking abortion to satanism, the devil and child sacrifice, arguing for pregnancy terminations to be banned in cases of rape, thinking abortions cause breast cancer, to being totally against sex and contraception.

Experts previously told me the majority of anti-abortion activists in the UK are opposed to abortions in instances of rape, incest, fatal foetal abnormality, or if the pregnancy places the woman’s life at risk.  But these views transcend activism and can be found in the corridors of Westminster, with senior Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg recently branding abortions morally wrong and a “cult of death”.

Mogg is fervently against abortions – not even believing in exceptions for cases where the pregnancy is the result of rape and incest. This isn’t necessarily an outlying case either – I previously reported on records which show the prime minister and senior members of his government have voted against boosting access to abortions or have opted out of key votes on terminations.

But to return to this case of Foster, who is currently locked up in prison for having an abortion past the legal cut-off point: what argument is there that jail is the right place for a woman, who is described as “a good mother to three children” and clearly poses zero risk to the public? Languishing in the four walls of a prison cell, far, far away from her three kids, will only inflict yet further harm and trauma on her, and on her children, one of whom has special needs. It is no secret that human rights abuses are rife in UK prisons, with inmates routinely struggling to access healthcare appointments due to staff shortages, and sometimes being locked in their cell for up to 23 hours a day. Yet this is now her reality.

But this case is about much more than just her. As abortion providers, campaigners and MPs have pointed out, her imprisonment exemplifies why abortion care in this country is broken. Unlike any other form of healthcare in the UK, abortions are still deemed a criminal act in England, Scotland and Wales under the 1967 Abortion Act.

Legislation passed in 1861 means any woman who ends a pregnancy without getting legal permission from two doctors, who must agree that continuing with it would be risky for the woman’s physical or mental health, can face up to life imprisonment. Any medical professional who delivers an abortion out of the terms of the act can face criminal punishment. Year on year, calls have been made for abortion care to be extricated from a criminal framework, and now these demands are growing ever louder.

An estimated one in three women will have an abortion in the UK in their lifetime. This is a routine, safe and legal form of healthcare. It is also a human right. This is neither a controversial nor minority view, but one echoed by prestigious medical bodies and human rights organisations around the world. “Abortion is a form of healthcare” is a mantra that we must hold onto.