A UK woman’s arrest proves abortion laws affect all of us

Pro-choice demonstrators are calling for revised laws and broader understanding of an issue often viewed as someone else’s. 

When Roe v. Wade was overturned last year, the abortion debate reignited with a vengeance.

This legal decision came as a shock to those on both sides of the pro-life/pro-choice debate.

But like America’s mounting gun violence, the regression of abortion rights overseas has given British commentators a false sense of separation – a fallacious degree of distance from issues that continue to shape our country’s social infrastructure in ways difficult to fathom.

Last Monday, we were reminded of the impact abortion rights have on all of us. UK pro-choice groups took to London’s streets, protesting an 1861 law outlining legal term limits for the abortion pill.

This return to a decades-old piece of legislation has been evocative of a post-Roe America.

Images of women calling for basic, fundamental rights to their own bodies dominate the news cycle. Ignorant by-standers question why these debates are necessary in 2023, living under the pretence that Britain is more progressive on this topic than other parts of the world.

The reason for this outcry of UK abortion legislation is the controversial arrest of Carla Foster, a 44-year-old mother of three who was sentenced to 28 months in custody for taking the abortion pill past the legal deadline.

Foster was using the ‘pills by post’ service, first introduced during the Covid-19 pandemic, which allows women to have an abortion at home, without the need for in-person consultation or treatment.

Women up to 10 weeks pregnant are eligible to receive the pills by post prescription following a phone-call with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS).

But Stoke on Trent crown court found that Foster had misled practitioners by saying she was only seven weeks along, when she knew she was in fact 32 to 34 weeks pregnant.

Foster had obtained the pills after moving back in with her ex-partner during lockdown restrictions. She was secretly carrying another man’s child.

The public outcry and high-emotion response to Foster’s arrest prove abortion debates are still fraught in the UK, despite making headlines far less than those in America.

Many are pointing out the need for reviewed laws around reproductive health. Foster was jailed under the Offences against the Person Act, which was first established in 1861.

The Act also lists issues specific to the time, such as ‘casting stone upon railway carriages’ and ‘assaulting keelmen’. If that doesn’t indicate the law is in need of an update, I don’t know what would.