Dear Editor:
While we wait: Abortion Law
We are waiting for the High Court to determine whether our abortion law is constitutional or not.
While we wait, the government that imposed that restrictive criminal law on us has taken another giant step to separate itself from that law. Parliament in England has now passed a law to expunge the records of all women convicted of abortions or attempted abortions all the way back to the 1800s. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/17/law-pardon-women-convicted-abortions-passes-uk-parliament
The government has admitted the folly, ineffectiveness, unfairness, and cruelty of treating women’s healthcare as a crime.
Long ago, in 1967, England made abortion broadly legal. That was step one: they admitted that the criminal law was harmful and unhelpful. The change from criminal punishment to public education has worked: the abortion rate there is 23; ours is 59.
Now, almost 60 years later, they are making a public apology for their misguided law and exonerating the women they stigmatized so deeply – emotionally and professionally, becausecriminal records damage careers.
Although we gained our independence in 1981, we chose to hang on to the archaic 1861 law. We are still doing so in 2026.
What we are seeking is not novel. Almost 40 years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada did exactly this in R v Morgentaler[1988] 1 SCR 30: it declared an abortion law almost identical to ours unconstitutional. And in 2017, the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland declared sections 58 and 59 of the OAPA incompatible with Article 8 of the European Commission on Human Rights.
We must hope that the High Court helps us to break with our love of punishment and declares the abortion law unconstitutional.
Sincerely,
ASPIRE
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