Abortion: Convictions and Prosecutions
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) charges have been brought, (b) prosecutions there have been and (c) convictions there have been for unlawful abortions in England and Wales in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Dame Diana Johnson
All women in England and Wales should have access to safe, regulated abortions on the NHS under our current laws. It is for Parliament to decide the circumstances under which abortions should take place, allowing members to vote according to their moral, ethical or religious beliefs. Decisions to bring a prosecution about abortion are for the independent Crown Prosecution Service.
The Home Office collects and publishes information on the number of notifiable offences, including the number of procuring illegal abortion offences, and intentional destruction of a viable unborn child offences, recorded by the police in England and Wales. This information is published as official statistics each quarter. The latest information, to the year ending December 2024, can be accessed here:
The Ministry of Justice publishes data on prosecutions and convictions under the Infant Life (Preservation) Act at criminal courts in England and Wales in the Outcomes by Offences data tool, that can be downloaded from the Criminal Justice Statistics landing page here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics
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