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MARY EARPS
Investigative reporter Bel Trew uncovers the worrying rise in anti-choice sentiment and US-style protests happening in the UK
olice search through bins while a mother, who had called an ambulance after a difficult home birth, performs mouth-to-mouth on her unconscious newborn unaided. A midwife calls the police on a woman hospitalised following the birth of a stillborn baby after she says she unwittingly took abortion pills too late. Another young woman is dragged publicly through the courts for three
years, accused of child destruction (killing an unborn foetus). Her name, address and photographs splashed across the news, only for her to be acquitted.
These harrowing stories paint a picture of a disturbing trend in England and Wales; a trend responsible for women facing “traumatic and prolonged” criminal investigations following pregnancy loss and abortion in “numbers never seen before,” according to a 30-strong group of medical bodies – including the British Medical Association, the Faculty of Public Health, and The Royal Colleges of General Practitioners. This same group, comprising nurses, psychiatrists, midwives and anaesthetists, argues that an outdated, 164-year-old law criminalising abortion is at fault.
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LONG READ | 15 Mins
There is a common misconception that abortion is legal in the UK. The 1967 Abortion Act legalised terminations in England, Wales and Scotland, up until 24 weeks, provided two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would pose a risk to the woman’s physical or mental health. In the wake of the pandemic, that was amended to allow eligible women in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy to have a medical abortion at home. Women who have abortions outside of these conditions risk receiving a custodial sentence – and this is where rights groups maintain the problem lies.
No one can say for sure why there has been a surge in women being reported to the police. However, what we do know is that it coincides with a growing anti-abortion movement.
Rallies outside abortion providers, for example, have become so intense that in October, 2024, the UK government took the extraordinary step of imposing 150-metre “safe access” buffer zones outside clinics to protect women using the services. This mirrors restrictions first imposed in the 1990s in the US – where swathes of states have since imposed strict abortion bans.
One person convinced of the US influence is Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, who regularly receives abuse for trying to decriminalise abortion. She believes that safe, legal, local abortions should be a protected human right across the UK, and argues that the anti-abortion movement has become increasingly funded (and trained) by US organisations and groups from other countries, including Russia.
“It sounds like a Dan Brown novel. It really is an international conspiracy. It’s not just funding but the arguments they make,” Creasy adds. Investigations by news outlets, including The Guardian, show that millions of US dollars have apparently poured into the same UK anti-abortion groups that have forged ties with UK politicians, drawn up policy briefings and run training programmes.
Creasy is also worried the British anti-abortion movement is becoming increasingly “aggressive”, admitting that she is regularly sent violent messages with the ‘stop Stella’ hashtag and was recently confronted (while out with her terrified four-year-old daughter) by a protester shouting “child killer”.
“I get death threats all the time, but I would say that I am increasingly concerned by the people they incite,” says Creasy. “It’s the idea that you are saving babies if you ‘stop Stella’. That’s a very potent justification
for action.”
“Overturning Roe v. Wade – removing the nationwide right to abortion in the US – has given anti-abortion movements in the UK, and across the globe, a significant boost”
“In recent years, more than 100 women have been investigated by the police on suspicion of ending their own pregnancy in England and Wales,” says Rachael Clarke from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. Many of them, she says, are highly vulnerable, “such as being under the age of 18, in abusive relationships, having long histories of mental ill-health, or suspected victims of exploitation and trafficking.”
Indeed, in the past two years six women have appeared in court charged with ending their pregnancy outside of the legal limits. Before this, only three convictions of illegal abortion had been recorded in more than a century.
This troubling spike in numbers is having an alarming effect, warns Dr Ranee Thakar, President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. “Worryingly, the fear of being investigated by the police may deter women from seeking urgent medical attention,” she says.
THE STATE OF UK ABORTION RIGHTS
Many believe that the 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade – removing the nationwide right to abortion in the US – has given the anti-abortion movements in the UK, and across the globe, a significant boost.
“We are concerned that what is happening in the US appears to be sparking debate among anti-choice groups on the right to abortion here in the UK,” says Dr Thakar.
Last year, I spent six months criss-crossing America to make a documentary called The A-Word, which tracks the devastating impacts of America’s abortion bans. In my naivety, I saw this as a uniquely American phenomenon, grown from a uniquely American movement. But, as the months went by, and I prepared to screen the film in the UK, I realised that nothing is in isolation.
THE US INFLUENCE ON PROTEST TACTICS
“I get death threats all the time. It’s the idea that you
are saving babies if you ‘stop Stella’. That’s a very
potent justification for action”
“It’s not a British tactic; it’s a very US[-centric] tactic to gather outside clinics and intimidate people”
Stella Creasy
Louise McCudden, at MSI Reproductive Choices – a charity that works in 36 countries, supporting more than 93,000 people every day to make choices about their reproductive healthcare – has also noticed a spike in protests outside UK clinics after the 2022 US abortion bans came into place. “That’s not something that originated in this country. It’s not a British tactic; it’s a very US[-centric] tactic to gather outside clinics and intimidate people,” she says.
I experienced one of these protests first-hand, a woman hurling herself at the car I was in as we drove to an abortion clinic in Bristol, USA. Assuming I was there to get an abortion, she pushed a leaflet through the window promoting the so-called “abortion-reversal pill”, which medical bodies in America and now the UK have said is unproven and potentially dangerous.
Bristol, Virginia, is one of five abortion clinics we shadowed for the film. Its lead obstetrician-gynecologist, Dr Aaron Campbell, fears for his life so much that he tucks a firearm into his scrubs as he performs abortions. His colleague wore a bulletproof vest to work until anti-abortion activists warned him it was pointless, as they would “just go for a headshot” anyway. “If they believe I’m a murderer they could feel justified in killing me,” he said, nervously.
VULNERABLE WOMEN PUSHED TO THE LEGAL LIMIT
In London, there have long been protests outside abortion clinics, but Ailish McEntee, a midwife for MSI UK, says that “the level of intensity” increased following the 2022 Dobbs ruling in America.
Protesters started coming up to the doors of clinics to intimidate women going in, she recalls, and there were regular prayer rallies where protestors handed out rosary beads. The more boisterous crowds would shout “Mummy” and hold up graphic images of bloodied foetuses. McEntee even remembers protestors spitting at those entering, frightening not only the women going into the clinic but also the staff – nurses, midwives, doctors, receptionists – some of whom had to use back doors to leave the building.
Polly Jackman from Sister Supporter, a British charity that has campaigned to end harassment outside clinics, recalls one crowd dousing staff with holy water while calling them “dirty women”.
“Actively seeking out abortion treatment outside the legal limits is actually a reflection of the dangerous circumstances [women face]”
Meanwhile, the anti-abortion lobby in the UK is clear about why it supports the surge in prosecutions; why it wants more restrictions in the UK; and why it vehemently disagrees with groups like MSI UK and medical bodies like The Royal Colleges, which it labels “the abortion industry”.
As Christian Hacking, a prolific anti-abortion activist, puts it: “[There’s] an absolute bloodbath going on in the United Kingdom. Unborn babies are human beings and they should be protected in law.”
In the last round of elections, he took his activism one step further, starting Vote Life – a network of independent candidates running on an anti-abortion platform. Fielding 22 candidates from Gateshead to Exeter, Hacking raised tens of thousands of pounds in donations, and says: “In total, we received over 5,000 votes, including in Coventry, [where] we received 500 votes, and in Gateshead, [where] we received 600 votes. So, in two places, we had a bit of block voting.”
Vote Life candidates stood for three things, he says: repealing the 1967 abortion legislation, securing “reparations for women harmed by abortion” and using the free leaflet drop you get when standing in an election “to educate on the humanity of unborn children in a non-judgemental way.”
One of its candidates was Julia Tilford, who ran in Lewisham North and handed out leaflets that contained graphic images of foetuses. She said she was surprised that as many as 240 people voted for her as she only attended one hustings. “There is a growing movement in the country of younger pro-lifers,” she tells me. “There’s raised awareness just from the fact it is going on in the US.”
Indeed, Donald Trump has repeatedly called himself America’s most “pro-life president” and his next step is widely expected to be reimposing a ‘global gag’ rule. This will prevent foreign organisations from receiving US global health assistance for providing information, referrals or services for legal abortion.
INSIDE THE UK ANTI-ABORTION GROUPS
For MSI UK, this means losing $14 million in funding for its global programmes. Other organisations will be forced to shut their services entirely. McCudden says millions of women and girls worldwide will be affected, losing access to reproductive health in some way. MSI analysis shows there are currently 690 million women of reproductive age living in countries receiving US AID funding, “[so] the impact globally is very significant,”
she adds.
With pressure from anti-abortion groups growing, Stella Creasy believes those who support choice in the UK should continue to fight for abortion to be decriminalised and for it to be recognised as a human right – as it has been in Northern Ireland.
“The anti-abortion movement is not just emboldened, it’s funded,” she states. Moves to reduce abortion access in the UK tend to focus on amendments to termination limits rather than a blanket ban, she adds: “It’s cleverer… it’s death by a thousand cuts.
“To anyone who’s passionate about being pro-choice in the UK, wake up,” she says. “When the backlash comes, women’s bodies are always the battleground. We’re always in the firing line. That means you need protections in law that cannot be easily undone. We don’t have any of those right now – and complacency is the thing that exposes us.”
Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images
Video credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Bel Trew
Photo credit: Bel Trew
Stella Creasy
During filming, we met women who had nearly died from the ban, including Nicole Blackmon, a Black mother living in Tennessee who discovered she was pregnant shortly after her teenage son was shot dead in a random drive-by shooting. Still reeling from the loss of her teenager, she was told the baby could not survive outside the womb, and that the pregnancy could be life-threatening. Yet, under Tennessee law, she was forced to carry the baby to term. After 32 hours of labour, she had to watch her baby die painfully in front of her.
PANIC ATTACKS, PAIN AND ‘ABORTION-REVERSAL’ PILLS
“I have panic attacks in my sleep, where I wake up in
sweats or scream from having nightmares. I can say
I survived, but I am not healed”
Nicole Blackmon
She is so terrified of being put through the same ordeal again that, despite wanting to be a mother, she underwent a voluntary sterilisation. “I have panic attacks in my sleep, where I wake up in sweats or scream from having nightmares. I can say I survived, but I am not healed,” she told me, her voice cracking with pain.
As we travelled across America we uncovered just how far the impact of these bans ricocheted, with maternal and early infant mortality rates on the rise – particularly among Black mothers and babies who are over twice as likely to die in childbirth or before the age of one.
We uncovered how the bans may be contributing to growing maternal healthcare deserts as obstetrician-gynecologists leave because of abortion bans; witnessed the increasing pressure being put on the foster-care system; and discovered that nearly $1 billion in government grants had been funnelled into anti-abortion ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’ between 2020 and 2022 – centres accused of pressuring women into not having abortions.
Crisis Pregnancy Centres, which now outnumber real abortion clinics in 43 out of 50 US states, appear to be growing traction in the UK, too, with reports of British anti-abortion activists also peddling the abortion-reversal pill. Sadly, it won’t stop there.
Merle Hoffman, founder of Choices Women’s Medical Center, in New York – one of the oldest legal abortion clinics in America – warns other countries “will look at what’s happening here and think, ‘If they can do this in the United States, we can too’. The US has always been a leader in this field and some will definitely follow,”
she says.
Ailish McEntee
Finally in October 2024, the UK government imposed 150-metre boundaries around all clinics and hospitals offering abortion services, which professionals say has helped. But McEntee is still worried about the rise in prosecutions of women.
“Actively seeking out abortion treatment outside the legal limits is actually a reflection of the dangerous circumstances [women face],” she explains, citing reasons like reproductive coercion, human trafficking and disabilities hindering access to services.
In her experience, domestic abuse and pregnancy as the result of sexual violence are major factors, which often force women to cancel appointments and delay treatment, which pushes them to the “very edge of the legal limit”. Of course, the most vulnerable take desperate measures.
“When the backlash comes, women’s bodies are always the battleground. We’re always in the firing line”
Stella Creasy
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US-style protests are becoming increasingly common on the streets of Britain as the pro-life movement gathers pace. But who is supplying the funding and support? Bel Trew investigates
Inside the UK’s
Anti-Abortion Movement
US-style protests are becoming increasingly common on the streets of Britain as the pro-life movement gathers pace. But who is supplying the funding and support? Bel Trew investigates
Inside The UK
Anti-Abortion Movement
Reporter Bel Trew investigates
THE STATE OF UK ABORTION RIGHTS
There is a common misconception that abortion is legal in the UK. The 1967 Abortion Act legalised terminations in England, Wales and Scotland, up until 24 weeks, provided two doctors agree that continuing the pregnancy would pose a risk to the woman’s physical or mental health. In the wake of the pandemic, that was amended to allow eligible women in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy to have a medical abortion at home. Women who have abortions outside of these conditions risk receiving a custodial sentence – and this is where rights groups maintain the problem lies.
No one can say for sure why there has been a surge in women being reported to the police. However, what we do know is that it coincides with a growing anti-abortion movement.
Rallies outside abortion providers, for example, have become so intense that in October, 2024, the UK government took the extraordinary step of imposing 150-metre “safe access” buffer zones outside clinics to protect women using the services. This mirrors restrictions first imposed in the 1990s in the US – where swathes of states have since imposed strict abortion bans.
Many believe that the 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade – removing the nationwide right to abortion in the US – has given the anti-abortion movements in the UK, and across the globe, a significant boost.
“We are concerned that what is happening in the US appears to be sparking debate among anti-choice groups on the right to abortion here in the UK,” says Dr Thakar.
Last year, I spent six months criss-crossing America to make a documentary called The A-Word, which tracks the devastating impacts of America’s abortion bans. In my naivety, I saw this as a uniquely American phenomenon, grown from a uniquely American movement. But, as the months went by, and I prepared to screen the film in the UK, I realised that nothing is in isolation.
“I get death threats all the time. It’s the idea that you are saving babies if you ‘stop Stella’. That’s a very potent justification for action”
Louise McCudden
One person convinced of the US influence is Stella Creasy, Labour MP for Walthamstow, who regularly receives abuse for trying to decriminalise abortion. She believes that safe, legal, local abortions should be a protected human right across the UK, and argues that the anti-abortion movement has become increasingly funded (and trained) by US organisations and groups from other countries, including Russia.
“It sounds like a Dan Brown novel. It really is an international conspiracy. It’s not just funding but the arguments they make,” Creasy adds. Investigations by news outlets, including The Guardian, show that millions of US dollars have apparently poured into the same UK anti-abortion groups that have forged ties with UK politicians, drawn up policy briefings and run training programmes.
Creasy is also worried the British anti-abortion movement is becoming increasingly “aggressive”, admitting that she is regularly sent violent messages with the ‘stop Stella’ hashtag and was recently confronted (while out with her terrified four-year-old daughter) by a protester shouting “child killer”.
“I get death threats all the time, but I would say that I am increasingly concerned by the people they incite,” says Creasy. “It’s the idea that you are saving babies if you ‘stop Stella’. That’s a very potent justification for action.”
Louise McCudden, at MSI Reproductive Choices – a charity that works in 36 countries, supporting more than 93,000 people every day to make choices about their reproductive healthcare – has also noticed a spike in protests outside UK clinics after the 2022 US abortion bans came into place. “That’s not something that originated in this country. It’s not a British tactic; it’s a very US[-centric] tactic to gather outside clinics and intimidate people,” she says.
I experienced one of these protests first-hand, a woman hurling herself at the car I was in as we drove to an abortion clinic in Bristol, USA. Assuming I was there to get an abortion, she pushed a leaflet through the window promoting the so-called “abortion-reversal pill”, which medical bodies in America and now the UK have said is unproven and potentially dangerous.
Bristol, Virginia, is one of five abortion clinics we shadowed for the film. Its lead obstetrician-gynecologist, Dr Aaron Campbell, fears for his life so much that he tucks a firearm into his scrubs as he performs abortions. His colleague wore a bulletproof vest to work until anti-abortion activists warned him it was pointless, as they would “just go for a headshot” anyway. “If they believe I’m a murderer they could feel justified in killing me,” he said, nervously.
“It’s not a British tactic; it’s a very
US[-centric] tactic to gather outside clinics and intimidate people”
Nicole Blackmon
During filming, we met women who had nearly died from the ban, including Nicole Blackmon, a Black mother living in Tennessee who discovered she was pregnant shortly after her teenage son was shot dead in a random drive-by shooting. Still reeling from the loss of her teenager, she was told the baby could not survive outside the womb, and that the pregnancy could be life-threatening. Yet, under Tennessee law, she was forced to carry the baby to term. After 32 hours of labour, she had to watch her baby die painfully in front of her.
She is so terrified of being put through the same ordeal again that, despite wanting to be a mother, she underwent a voluntary sterilisation. “I have panic attacks in my sleep, where I wake up in sweats or scream from having nightmares. I can say I survived, but I am not healed,” she told me, her voice cracking with pain.
As we travelled across America we uncovered just how far the impact of these bans ricocheted, with maternal and early infant mortality rates on the rise – particularly among Black mothers and babies who are over twice as likely to die in childbirth or before the age of one.
We uncovered how the bans may be contributing to growing maternal healthcare deserts as obstetrician-gynecologists leave because of abortion bans; witnessed the increasing pressure being put on the foster-care system; and discovered that nearly $1 billion in government grants had been funnelled into anti-abortion ‘Crisis Pregnancy Centres’ between 2020 and 2022 – centres accused of pressuring women into not having abortions.
Crisis Pregnancy Centres, which now outnumber real abortion clinics in 43 out of 50 US states, appear to be growing traction in the UK, too, with reports of British anti-abortion activists also peddling the abortion-reversal pill. Sadly, it won’t stop there.
Merle Hoffman, founder of Choices Women’s Medical Center, in New York – one of the oldest legal abortion clinics in America – warns other countries “will look at what’s happening here and think, ‘If they can do this in the United States, we can too’. The US has always been a leader in this field and some will definitely follow,” she says.
“I have panic attacks in my sleep, where I wake up in sweats or scream from having nightmares. I can say I survived, but I am not healed”
Ailish McEntee
In London, there have long been protests outside abortion clinics, but Ailish McEntee, a midwife for MSI UK, says that “the level of intensity” increased following the 2022 Dobbs ruling in America.
Protesters started coming up to the doors of clinics to intimidate women going in, she recalls, and there were regular prayer rallies where protestors handed out rosary beads. The more boisterous crowds would shout “Mummy” and hold up graphic images of bloodied foetuses. McEntee even remembers protestors spitting at those entering, frightening not only the women going into the clinic but also the staff – nurses, midwives, doctors, receptionists – some of whom had to use back doors to leave the building.
Polly Jackman from Sister Supporter, a British charity that has campaigned to end harassment outside clinics, recalls one crowd dousing staff with holy water while calling them “dirty women”.
Finally in October 2024, the UK government imposed 150-metre boundaries around all clinics and hospitals offering abortion services, which professionals say has helped. But McEntee is still worried about the rise in prosecutions of women.
“Actively seeking out abortion treatment outside the legal limits is actually a reflection of the dangerous circumstances [women face],” she explains, citing reasons like reproductive coercion, human trafficking and disabilities hindering access to services.
In her experience, domestic abuse and pregnancy as the result of sexual violence are major factors, which often force women to cancel appointments and delay treatment, which pushes them to the “very edge of the legal limit”. Of course, the most vulnerable take desperate measures.
“Actively seeking out abortion treatment outside the legal limits is actually a reflection of the dangerous circumstances [women face]”
Stella Creasy
Meanwhile, the anti-abortion lobby in the UK is clear about why it supports the surge in prosecutions; why it wants more restrictions in the UK; and why it vehemently disagrees with groups like MSI UK and medical bodies like The Royal Colleges, which it labels “the abortion industry”.
As Christian Hacking, a prolific anti-abortion activist, puts it: “[There’s] an absolute bloodbath going on in the United Kingdom. Unborn babies are human beings and they should be protected in law.”
In the last round of elections, he took his activism one step further, starting Vote Life – a network of independent candidates running on an anti-abortion platform. Fielding 22 candidates from Gateshead to Exeter, Hacking raised tens of thousands of pounds in donations, and says: “In total, we received over 5,000 votes, including in Coventry, [where] we received 500 votes, and in Gateshead, [where] we received 600 votes. So, in two places, we had a bit of block voting.”
Vote Life candidates stood for three things, he says: repealing the 1967 abortion legislation, securing “reparations for women harmed by abortion” and using the free leaflet drop you get when standing in an election “to educate on the humanity of unborn children in a non-judgemental way.”
One of its candidates was Julia Tilford, who ran in Lewisham North and handed out leaflets that contained graphic images of foetuses. She said she was surprised that as many as 240 people voted for her as she only attended one hustings. “There is a growing movement in the country of younger pro-lifers,” she tells me. “There’s raised awareness just from the fact it is going on in the US.”
Indeed, Donald Trump has repeatedly called himself America’s most “pro-life president” and his next step is widely expected to be reimposing a ‘global gag’ rule. This will prevent foreign organisations from receiving US global health assistance for providing information, referrals or services for legal abortion.
Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images
Video credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images
Words: Bel Trew
DESIGN: Treasa Burns