Abortion – criminal investigations

In an interview with the BBC, Dr Jonathan Lord, medical director at MSI Reproductive Choices, raised concerns about an ‘unprecedented’ number of women being investigated by police on suspicion of illegally ending their pregnancy. He said that he knows of up to 60 criminal inquiries in England and Wales since 2018, compared with almost zero before.

The Home Office publishes annual data for the numbers and categories of police recorded crime and outcomes. There are two offence codes that could be used when police investigate a suspected breach of the abortion law; Offence 14 – Procuring illegal abortion and Offence 4.3 – Intentional destruction of a viable unborn child.

Over the nine financial years, up to March 2023, the average number of investigations for Offence 14, has been seven per year. This annual average has not changed much since 2018; in the four years up to and including 2017/18, the average was seven and in the five years since then up to 2022/23, the average has been eight.

Over these nine years, there have been sixty six investigations under Offence 14 – Procuring illegal abortion, and across these there are eleven outcomes recorded as ‘Charged/Summonsed’, (irrespective of any subsequent sentencing or acquittal at Court), all other investigations were in effect dropped without charge. That means an average of one charge per year.

Data for Offence 4.3 – Intentional destruction of a viable unborn child, show: one hundred and four investigations in nine years, an average of 12 each year, and a total of nineteen charges, an average of 2 per year.

When reviewing these data it is important to note that not all will be investigations of formerly-pregnant women, some might be investigations of 3rd parties, often men who are suspected of violently causing the loss of their partner’s late-stage pregnancy.

There has been no unprecedented increase and the data in recent years has been only slightly more than that before 2018.

Laura Farris, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice and Home Office), said at a Public Bill Committee on 25 Jan 24, that in last six years, MOJ data shows just one criminal conviction under these abortion laws, and that sentence was subsequently suspended.

These are very small numbers compared to the annual numbers of legal abortions, estimated to be 250,000 in 2022 and extremely small considering the six million crime records each year.