SIAN NORRIS
At the end of May, Ireland could become the latest European country to legalise abortion. A referendum to repeal the country’s 8th Amendment may lead to the end of restrictive laws which, according to the United Nations, violate women’s human rights. That will leave just two European nations where abortion remains illegal: Malta and Northern Ireland. But there are three other nations in Europe that retain highly restrictive laws which criminalise abortion unless performed under certain circumstances. And one of those is Great Britain.
There is a widespread assumption in this country that the 1967 Abortion Act, part of Roy Jenkins’s raft of reforms which created the “permissive society,” decriminalised abortion in England, Scotland and Wales. That’s not strictly accurate. The 1967 Act provided exemptions under which women would not be prosecuted according to the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act.