Stillbirth surveillance is the next chapter of our dystopian and dangerous abortion laws. Our parliaments must legislate to decriminalise.

We were chilled to read about the new stillbirth surveillance guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC). This NPCC guidance on “child death investigations” includes the seizure of mobile phones and accessing data from menstrual tracking apps in order to understand people’s “intentions” with the pregnancy. You would think this was a news story in Trump’s America, not right on our doorstep.

This development is part of a wider picture: one of an incremental and dystopian attack on women’s rights, both at home and across the globe. Anti-abortion activism in the UK is on the rise, with the UK branch of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) receiving over £1.1 million in 2024 from the US parent body. Last year, Nigel Farage said that rolling back the 24-week abortion limit was “worthy of a debate in parliament”. Meanwhile, misogyny is increasingly becoming mainstream globally, while nearly a quarter of governments reported backlash on gender equality in 2024.

Reform to abortion law in England and Wales is long overdue. Currently, abortion is a criminal offence under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, unless it is carried out according to the requirements of the Abortion Act 1967. Over the last 10 years we’ve seen an increase in police suspicion with dozens of investigations and six women in England charged in the past two years alone. 

In 2021, a 15-year-old girl was investigated for a year for an unexplained stillbirth, which was dropped after they concluded that it was due to natural causes. In 2024, a case against Bethany Cox was dropped after a three-year investigation where she was charged with abortion as a teenager. A psychiatric examination found that this had a “profound” impact on Cox. Mothers have been prevented from caring for their children.

People who are already suffering from trauma relating to stillbirth, miscarriage, and the ending of a pregnancy have been subjected to lengthy invasive investigations and emotional turmoil, while stripped of their support network at a time of vulnerability. Women denied access to their premature babies, their devices seized by police, having to hand over breastmilk to hospital receptionists because they previously considered an abortion. This cannot go on.

The new NPCC guidance is therefore only the next step in a country where women are criminalised for accessing healthcare and the post-Roe America is falling upon our doorstep. Alongside the trauma and pain forced upon those under investigation, irreparable damage will be done to trust in law enforcement and healthcare providers, especially for women of colour and survivors or rape or sexual assault. Reporting a crime or accessing healthcare could expose women to these horrendous investigations over their reproductive choices.

1 in 3 women in the UK will have an abortion in their lifetime. It is healthcare and must be treated as such. It was a Liberal private members bill that saw the majority of abortions brought out of the back alley. But the nearly 60-year old legislation harms a minority of already vulnerable women.

In response to rising prosecutions for abortions, over 30 organisations and experts, including the British Medical Association, the Royal College of General Practitioners, and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, signed a joint statement calling for Parliament to remove the threat of prosecution for abortion. Decriminalisation is a necessary step to protect the rights, the dignity, and the livelihoods of pregnant people. 

Two amendments are being tabled to the Crime and Policing Bill to decriminalise abortion, one by Tonia Antonizazzi and one by Stella Creasy. We are delighted to see that some Liberal Democrat MPs have already signed these, and we encourage Liberal Democrat MPs to back these moves to decriminalise abortion. We must push back against the rollback of women’s rights. Decriminalise abortion now.

* Janey Little is Vice Chair and Eleanor Kelly is Head of Comms for Lib Dem Women