MPs have voted to change abortion legislation to stop women in England and Wales being prosecuted for ending their pregnancy. The Labour MP for Gower, Tonia Antoniazzi, led the call to decriminalise the 1% of abortions that happen after 24 weeks, saying these were “desperate women” who need “compassion not criminalisation”. As an issue of...
Getty Images A law change aimed at decriminalising abortion will be debated in the House of Commons on Tuesday. Two Labour MPs, Tonia Antoniazzi and Stella Creasy, have tabled rival amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill. Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle could pick one or both amendments to be debated by MPs, but is likely...
Women would no longer be prosecuted for terminating a pregnancy in England and Wales under a proposed shake-up of abortion laws. MPs are set to get a free vote next week – meaning they will not be told how to vote by their party – on a change to the law. It comes amid concern...
The Trump administration’s rule change will create “fear and confusion” at hospitals across the country, critics noted. The Trump administration announced on Tuesday that it is rescinding a Biden-era guidance requiring emergency rooms across the country to provide abortion services to people facing health emergencies relating to pregnancy complications. That guidance, issued in 2022 shortly...
This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of her reporting on gender, politics and policy. Using flawed studies and scientific journal publications, abortion opponents are building a body of research meant to question the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone, a key target for the movement....
Getty Images The French scientist who created the abortion pill has died at the age of 98. Étienne-Émile Baulieu helped develop the oral drug RU-486, also known as mifepristone, which has provided millions of women across the world with a safe and inexpensive alternative to a surgical abortion. Dr Baulieu died at his home in...
Image Credit: WXIA A 30-year-old Black woman in Georgia has been kept on life support for three months against her family’s wishes because of the state’s “fetal heartbeat” anti-abortion law. Adriana Smith was declared legally dead in February after a medical emergency caused her brain function to cease. Smith, a nurse, had been initially turned...
Missouri voters passed a voter-led ballot initiative enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution last year. Republican lawmakers in the Missouri state legislature have approved a referendum proposal for voters to decide on that, if passed, would upend newly enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. Last November, Missouri was one of seven states to...
Abortion rights defenders and scientists expressed deep concern after U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s remarks about mifepristone, a key medication used to end pregnancies, at a Wednesday congressional hearing. During the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) inquired about the secretary’s previous pledge to...
A woman accused of having an illegal abortion has been cleared by a jury. Nicola Packer, 45, cried as she was acquitted of “unlawfully administering to herself a poison or other noxious thing” with the “intent to procure a miscarriage”. Her trial at Isleworth Crown Court heard she took abortion medicine at home during the...
A leading Polish doctor has told the BBC she fears for her patients’ safety after being targeted by anti-abortion activists. Gizela Jagielska says she has received thousands of death threats in relation to her work administering legal abortions in a hospital in the town of Olesnica in southwestern Poland. The facility specialises in complicated pregnancies....
Yesterday the Washington Post published a story about a Tuscaloosa, Alabama abortion clinic that isn’t an abortion clinic any longer. I think we’re supposed to feel bad about this. Once, it was the sole abortion clinic in this half of the state. Then Roe v. Wade fell, the legislature’s near-total ban on the procedure took...
Jordan Pettitt/PA Wire Livia Tossici-Bolt was found guilty of two charges of breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order on two days in March 2023 A woman convicted of breaching an abortion clinic protection zone has said she will continue her “fight for free speech”. Livia Tossici-Bolt, 64, was given a two-year conditional discharge and ordered...
A woman at the centre of a free speech controversy involving the US government has been found guilty of breaching a “buffer zone” outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic. Livia Tossici-Bolt was convicted at Poole Magistrates’ Court of two charges of breaching the Public Spaces Protection Order on two days in March 2023. The 64-year-old anti-abortion...
“The court’s decision today should send a strong message to any and all anti-abortion politicians,” an attorney said. A federal court has ruled that Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall and district attorneys cannot take legal action against people who help pregnant Alabamians access abortion care in states where it remains legal. The court determined that...