Legal advice provided by Kent abortion law expert Professor Sally Sheldon has been acknowledged in Parliament after MPs secured the right to introduce a Bill that would decriminalise abortion in England and Wales.
Currently, under sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, a woman who has an abortion without conforming to strict medical controls is punishable by life imprisonment, with anyone who helps her also potentially guilty of a serious criminal offence. A Ten Minute Rule Bill calling for these sections to be repealed, was successfully passed in the House of Commons on Monday.
The Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill 2016-17 was introduced by Diana Johnson, MP for Hull North, under the Ten Minute Rule, where backbench MPs can make a case for a new bill in a speech that does not exceed ten minutes.
During her speech (from15:58 minutes in), Diana Johnson thanked Professor Sheldon for her legal advice and for her support. Professor Sheldon had previously coordinated a group of more than 200 law professors and legal experts to sign a letter (published in the Guardian) which commended Diana Johnson for her Bill. In the letter, the bill was described as ‘an important first step towards taking pre-viability abortion out of the criminal law’.
In an interview with the Guardian, Professor Sheldon said: ‘Why do we want to keep the framework and the criminal prohibition? I don’t hear people saying it is a good idea to be able to send women to prison for life for having an abortion outside of medical control.’
The new Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill, which also aims to regulate the termination of pregnancies by medical practitioners, is scheduled to have its second reading debate on Friday 24 March 2017. It will be brought forward by a cross-party group of MPs. Professor Sheldon said: ‘While constraints of time make it unlikely the Bill will proceed beyond that point, it nonetheless is significant as representing an important first step in building momentum towards reform.’
Professor Sheldon teaches health care law and ethics to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Kent Law School. She is a leading expert and commentator on the regulation of abortion in the UK and previously contributed to a discussion about the decriminalisation of abortion at the House of Commons in October 2014. She is also a trustee of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Her recent Medical Abortion and the Law project is one of two research projects in this area. The second, awarded a £0.5m research grant by the AHRC in 2016, is a two-year historical study, entitled The Abortion Act (1967): a Biography.
Professor Sheldon has published widely in the area of health care ethics and law with books including Beyond Control: Medical Power and Abortion Law, a co-edited collection of essays on Feminist Perspectives on Health Care Law and a socio-legal study of fatherhood called Fragmenting Fatherhood, co-authored with Richard Collier of Newcastle Law School.