On the 17th June 2025, MPs voted in favour of removing women from criminal law in relation to procuring an abortion in England and Wales, via an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill tabled by Labour MP, Tonia Antoniazzi.
Once passed, this will finally put a stop to the criminalisation of people who have abortions and do away with an archaic law – the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act – which was created before women even had the right to vote.
This change follows a long-running campaign by the country’s leading abortion providers, BPAS and MSI, and more than thirty other organisations such as the End Violence Against Women Coalition, Royal College of Obstetricians & Gynaecologists, with us here at Cosmopolitan UK.
The day of the vote, Catriona Innes spoke to Becca* who was investigated under this cruel and archaic law. This victory will mean there will be no more women like Becca, who was put through hell, when all she needed was support, love and care. This is her story.
I was still in my pyjamas when the police came to my door. I hadn’t been home in weeks. I’d been sleeping at the hospital, I needed to be close to my baby, Harry* who had been born prematurely, at 28 weeks. He was one month old and he’d just learned how to breathe all on his own.
My boyfriend was with him, so I grabbed the chance to dash home and have a much-needed shower and change my clothes. I’d just applied a hair mask, when the police arrived and told me I was under arrest. I was “under suspicion of procuring a miscarriage by instrument or tablets.” I asked if I could change and they said I could, but only with a police officer present, watching me. I left the hair mask in; I didn’t want to shower with a stranger in the room.
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I was in custody for around six hours before they questioned me. The whole time I had no idea what was happening, and no one would tell me. I kept asking, “When will I be able to see my son?” I asked over and over again, but no one would answer. I became terrified I’d never see him again.
During the interview, I was treated like a criminal. I work in a hospital, and they accused me of stealing abortion medication. They said I’d been whispering with the nurses and using them to help me get the pills. They acted like I had planned all of this, like I wanted to see my baby so tiny, being told he might never walk.
I began to feel like I had done some really wrong. That all of this was my fault. The police were saying all of this, and I was so exhausted, I began to believe them. My brain had just stopped working. I couldn’t think straight.
What had happened, and what I tried to explain, was that I had discovered I was pregnant and as I was a teenager, and I hadn't been in a relationship very long, I phoned abortion providers, as soon as I found out, telling them I wanted an abortion. I was told I’d have to travel to a clinic, in either London or Manchester, both of which were hours away from where I lived. It was hard for me to find somewhere close by so I decided to go private. I paid £500 and spoke to the doctor over the phone. I told him when my last period had been and he told me I was nine weeks pregnant.** He sent me the medication straight away.
A few hours after taking the pills, I was in so much pain I was throwing up. There hadn’t been any bleeding. The doctor had told me that if I hadn’t bled after a certain amount of hours I was to call him. I did. He didn’t pick up. When I called 111 they put me through to an abortion specialist, who told me to go to A&E.
When I got there, I told them the truth. That I was pregnant and that I’d taken abortion medication prescribed to me by a doctor. I was told the amount of pain I was in was normal. But I knew it wasn’t. I knew my own body. Eventually, I was moved to a women’s ward and I was scanned. I was six months pregnant. I had no idea. I hadn’t gained much weight and my periods had remained regular. The nurses were so reassuring, they could tell how much of a shock this was to me. Then, the pain began to come in waves. I was rushed to the labour ward and he was born within four minutes of me getting there. It was an hour between me finding out how far along I was and him coming into the world.
The hospital where he was born didn’t have a neonatal ward that was specialised enough for a baby that young, so he was moved. As soon as I was discharged, I went to be beside him. Again, the staff there were so kind about everything that had happened. But then he was moved off the ventilator and into another hospital. We were in that hospital for two weeks and then someone there reported us to the police and social services. They had to wait until my boyfriend and I were apart before they could arrest us. That’s why they waited until I was home. They arrested my boyfriend at Harry’s* cot side.
Our bail conditions were that we couldn’t be unsupervised with Harry. We were arrested on a Thursday but they couldn’t look at our case until Monday. For three days I couldn’t hold him or breastfeed him. I wasn’t even allowed to call the hospital to ask if he was OK. Before that, we hadn’t left his side.
I’d been saying that we needed support. We had been in the hospital with him for weeks, before the investigation began. We had to figure out how to be parents, to adapt to this huge life change. I knew I loved him, instantly, and would do anything to protect him. But I wanted to know the basics of looking after a baby. I wanted someone to be there for me and walk me through what I was doing. Instead, I got “if you don’t do this, we’re taking your child off of you.” I was being threatened, rather than supported. It turned out we were reported because our room was messy. It was messy but we were new parents in a totally unusual living situation, with hardly any storage or cupboards.
It was later agreed, after strict background checks on our parents, that we were allowed to be with our baby but only with them there. Our connection to our son was instant. We just wanted to have time to learn to be a family of three. But we couldn’t, as we were watched 24/7. We had no privacy. I was really embarrassed whenever I breastfed in front of my boyfriend’s dad, so I stopped doing that. I didn’t feel I could be Harry’s mum in the way I wanted to be.
We faced so much judgement. A lot of people said that I must not care about my son now, because I had wanted an abortion. But that was a different time. When I made the decision about the abortion it was when I had been told I was nine weeks along. Now he’s here, of course I don’t want anything bad to happen to him. This was not the situation we expected ourselves to be in, but our son is here now, and we want to be the best parents we can.
It’s very easy to judge someone in a situation like this, if you haven’t been there yourself. I wanted to do everything I could for him and they stopped me from doing that. I don’t see how the way we were treated helps anything; the babies are the ones most affected by this. The main person this has impacted is Harry. He had his parents taken away from him, at the very early stages of his life, when he needed skin-on-skin contact. Then when we could be with him the investigation caused so much stress I couldn’t fully be in the moment with him.
This is such a personal thing to happen in someone's life, it's not in public interest at all. I think even in a very rare scenario where the woman may have took the medication knowing how far along she was, it's never malicious. It's never: ‘I hate babies and I want to kill babies.’ It's fear. It's something completely different. It’s something so many people won't understand, because I'll never have to go through it.
Abortion provider BPAS have been supporting me, and I’ve heard, from them, about those in domestic abuse and sex trafficking situations, which led them to go over the limit. Why do people like that deserve prison time? When they’ve already been through so much? In comparison, to other women, I've had it lucky that my baby survived and he's doing well. There are women whose babies haven't survived, and I can't imagine what that's like. I gave birth in a hospital. Some people women have had to do this completely alone. They've suffered enough, in my opinion. Why should we add to that?
My son is older now and we just celebrated his birthday. Six months after he was born, all social service involvement ended. We passed all of our parenting assessments and so, last month, we’ve been able to move into our own home. We are doing so well! As he was born premature, we were told all these different things, like how there was a risk he might never walk. He’s just started to crawl! The pride that we have for him, constantly, with all of his milestones. Like his oxygen feeding tubes coming out, the heart monitors coming off… Every little moment has just been amazing.
I think because of what we've been through, we appreciate those moments even more. We get to be there for them, when there was a time where it looked like we wouldn’t. But, amidst all of this, the investigation is still ongoing. The police still have our phones and laptops. They're still going through them almost a year later. It's just this big looming thing. Everything else is so good, and we're doing so well, and Harry* is doing so well, but then we go to bed and suddenly it hits us, this is still happening. We don’t know when it will end. It just all feels such a waste of time, a waste of police time, a waste of money, a waste of our mental well-being and stress, and it just feels so like, why there's need for this?
Hearing the result come through felt like such a win. We don't know how it will impact our individual case but, at least now, I know what happened to me will never happen to anyone ever again. All we needed was compassion and support, to create the best environment for our child. We shouldn't have been treated like criminals.
Catriona Innes is Commissioning Director at Cosmopolitan, you can follow her on Instagram.
*Names have been changed
** Studies estimate that one in 400 women are 20 weeks (about five months) into pregnancy before realising. Approximately one in 2,500 women only find out they are pregnant when they go into labour. These instances are often known as Cryptic Pregnancies.
Professor Ranee Thakar, President of the RCOG said:
“Pregnancy symptoms vary widely. Some women experience many, while others have none and so it’s not unusual for someone to be unaware they’re pregnant at first. It is also common to experience light bleeding or spotting in early pregnancy, which can be confused with a regular period.”
A note from BPAS: Telemedicine is not the cause of abortion prosecutions – the archaic law is the cause.
The largest study of abortion care in the world found at the time that telemedical abortion care is safe, effective, and improves care. Specifically, it found that telemedical abortion was a more effective form of abortion care than requiring women to attend a clinic – with 99.2% of women having a successful termination. Telemedicine has seen the proportion of abortions taking place at the earliest gestations increase, with 40% now taking place by 6 weeks – an increase from 25% prior to the introduction of telemedicine – and this pathway also provides a safe and confidential way for women in abusive and controlling relationships to access care.
We undoubtedly need to improve women’s access to abortion care in certain parts of the country, and that work is ongoing by healthcare providers and clinical groups.
Catriona Innes is Cosmopolitan UK’s multiple award-winning Commissioning Editor, who has won BSME awards both for her longform investigative journalism as well as for leading the Cosmopolitan features department. Alongside commissioning and editing the features section, both online and in print, Catriona regularly writes her own hard-hitting investigations spending months researching some of the most pressing issues affecting young women today.
She has spent time undercover with specialist police forces, domestic abuse social workers and even Playboy Bunnies to create articles that take readers to the heart of the story. Catriona is also a published author, poet and volunteers with a number of organisations that directly help the homeless community of London. She’s often found challenging her weak ankles in towering heels through the streets of Soho. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.
