I speak to new clause 50, tabled in my name and that of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson).
We badly need a wake-up call, because at the moment we are allowing the criminal law as currently drafted to drive a fundamental wedge between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, treating women in Northern Ireland in a completely different way from women in England and Wales when it comes to abortion. Two years ago, the Government changed the law governing abortion in Northern Ireland after a vote in this place, removing criminal sanctions on abortions in Northern Ireland, while leaving women in England and indeed Wales facing
the possibility of the harshest criminal sanctions for abortion in the world, under laws passed more than 50 years before any women was even able to vote for the people representing them in this place.
New clause 50 would change that. It would decriminalise abortion and ensure that women in England and Wales are treated in the same way as women in Northern Ireland when it comes to abortion. Our values and our rights are what unite our four nations. To treat women differently in those nations weakens those ties. That needs to be rectified. The new clause does just that, and it would change nothing about abortion services, access to abortion or the time limits on abortion.
The women most likely to be affected and governed by the criminal law are some of the most vulnerable in our society: victims of domestic abuse, of honour-based violence and of rape, and those who are too poor or marginalised to travel to a clinic to seek help. If a desperate woman attempts to end her pregnancy, do we really want her to not seek medical help for fear of arrest and prosecution? New clause 50 simply removes women from being subject to the criminal law for seeking an abortion, and it is fully supported by the medical experts, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of General Practitioners.
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I would like the Government to set out, perhaps when the Minister responds to the debate, what plans they have going forward. I hope that the new clause passes today, and I will be pressing it to a vote. It is no longer sufficient to say that changes such as this can come from the Back Benches—that got us where we are today, dividing our country. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has the responsibility for abortion policy in this country and he needs to act so that every women in this United Kingdom has the same rights when it comes to abortion, and the same protections too.