Some are men

Abortion campaigners have raised concern about the increasing number of women facing police investigation for illegal abortions. In March, during the Report Stage for the Criminal Justice Bill, it is expected that MPs will debate Dame Diana Johnson’s amendment, NC1, which calls for women to be removed from the criminal law related to abortion, thus ensuring that no woman faces prosecution or jail time for ending her own pregnancy, at any gestation. When presented with the evidence from these campaigners, MPs should consider the following.

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. Data for the nine years up to March 2023 are discussed in this earlier post: ‘Abortion – criminal investigations’.

In 2022/23, there were twenty eight police investigations recorded against these two codes; the above mentioned increase compared to prior years. The most important detail to note is that not all of these investigations were against the previously-pregnant women. These abortion laws are also used to investigate e.g., those who assist others with abortion such as a parent obtaining abortion pills for their underage daughter, or those who cause an abortion by assault or spiking. So, some cases will have been women ending their own pregnancy, some will have been women causing another woman to miscarry, and others will have been men.

Case details are not in the published Home Office data and so it necessary to correlate with reports from the Crown Prosecution Service and related Freedom of Information reports.

In 2022, Darren Burke was convicted of attempting to administer poison with intent to cause a miscarriage, having been found guilty of spiking his girlfriend’s drink with mifepristone; his would have been one of the investigations in the increasing number reported by campaigners.

In 2023, NationalWorld reported the case of Zdenka Yabani who killed herself by jumping in front of a train, she was eight months’ pregnant at the time. British Transport Police initially recorded this case under Offence 4.3; a tragic case of suicide, not abortion related, but recorded as such.

In 2022, NationalWorld reported findings from its FOI request to Police Forces across England and Wales, asking to be told the sex of those being investigated under Offences 14 and 4.3. Data was received from 35 of the 44 police forces and showed for the period March 2014 to December 2021:

• For Offence 14 – Procuring illegal abortion: 17 females, 13 males, and 21 cases with sex not recorded (Unknown) – a total of 51 cases
• Offence 4.3 – Intentional destruction of a viable unborn child: 15 females, 28 males, and 36 unknown – a total of 79 cases.

Even though this dataset is not complete, it is clear that we need to note the significant proportion of cases that are investigating men, and that this is higher in the case count for Offence 4.3.

We can either assume that the sex of those Unknown cases will be in the same proportions as the known cases or, to err on the side of caution, we can assume that all of those unknown will be female. The total reported cases is 130, it is likely that 57 of these were women (44%) or at the very most 89 were women (68%).

Applying these findings to the 2022/23 reported case count of twenty eight, we can say that no more than twenty of these will have been investigations into women ending their own pregnancy. The most recent data published by the Home Office, in January 2024, shows five of the twenty eight cases led to a charge or summons for court proceedings; for context, seven cases had this outcome, Charged/Summonsed, in 2014/15 and six in 2020/21.

The full set of outcomes in 2022/23 are (as at January 2024):

Outcome Group	2022/23
Charged/Summonsed	5
Diversionary, educational or intervention activity, resulting from the crime report, has been undertaken and it is not in the public interest to take any further action.	0
Evidential difficulties (suspect identified; victim supports action)	7
Evidential difficulties (victim does not support action)	5
Further investigation to support formal action not in the public interest – police decision	0
Investigation complete – no suspect identified	4
Out-of-court (formal)	0
Out-of-court (informal)	0
Prosecution prevented or not in the public interest	1
Responsibility for further investigation transferred to another body	0
Taken into consideration	0
Not yet assigned an outcome	6
Total Investigations	28

In conclusion, we find that some of these abortion-related police recorded crime are investigations into women ending their own pregnancy, some may have been women causing another woman to miscarry, and perhaps as many as 30% will have been men. Only a small proportion end up as Charged/Summonsed; we will review a number of these cases in upcoming posts.