Wednesday 18th June 2025
MPs have voted to pass Tonia Antoniazzi MP’s amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill which will remove women from the criminal law in relation to abortion.
Heidi Stewart, Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, said:
"This is a landmark moment for women’s rights in this country and the most significant change to our abortion law since the 1967 Abortion Act was passed. There will be no more women investigated after enduring a miscarriage, no more women dragged from their hospital beds to the back of a police van, no more women separated from their children because of our archaic abortion law. This is a hard won victory, and we thank all those who have campaigned alongside us, and in particular those women, like Nicola Packer, who have spoken out about their traumatic experiences in the hope of achieving the change parliament has delivered today.
"When we launched the campaign to decriminalise abortion in 2016, we could not have envisaged that within a decade such progress would be achieved. In the past 6 years, we have seen more progressive reform of abortion law than we had seen in the previous 50. Today’s vote is testament to the strength of support for abortion rights across the healthcare sector, civil society, parliament, and the country as a whole. We look forward to continuing to work with MPs to deliver wider reform and an abortion framework fit for the twenty-first century."
For background and full list of organisations who support the amendment, please see here.
For further comment, please contact Katherine O’Brien, Head of Campaigns and Communications at BPAS, on 07881 265276 or email katherine.obrien@bpas.org
About BPAS
The British Pregnancy Advisory Service, BPAS, is a charity that sees over 100,000 women a year for reproductive healthcare services including pregnancy counselling, abortion care, miscarriage management and contraception at clinics across Great Britain.
BPAS exists to further women’s reproductive choices. We believe all women should have the right to make their own decisions in and around pregnancy, from the contraception they use to avoid pregnancy right the way through to how they decide to feed their newborn baby, with access to evidence-based information to underpin their choices and high-quality services and support to exercise them.
BPAS also runs the Centre for Reproductive Research and Communication, CRRC. Through rigorous multidisciplinary research and impactful communication, the CRRC aims to inform policy, practice, and public discourse. You can find out more here.