Lords to vote on plan to let ladies legally terminate their child as much as start

Peers will launch a last-ditch bid this week to block ‘reckless’ plans to let women legally terminate their baby up to birth.

Concerned members of the Lords will attempt this week to vote down measures to decriminalise abortion after 24 weeks or without approval from doctors – blasting the plans as ‘reckless and radical’.

In the biggest shake up to abortion laws in half a century, MPs last year voted to decriminalise abortion ‘up to birth’, leaving women free to abort their baby for any reason – including if they are not satisfied with the baby’s sex.

The surprise amendment was tabled by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi to the Crime and Policing Bill, after being debated for just 46 minutes in the House of Commons.

The proposal passed with 379 MPs voting in favour and 137 against, and was subsequently incorporated into the bill.

This is despite the public being staunchly against aborting pregnancies at any point up to birth – with 91 per cent of those polled voicing disagreement when surveyed by The Telegraph.

Peers will now have the chance to remove the proposals entirely from the legislation this week with the Crime and Policing Bill being scrutinised at report stage in the Lords, with votes expected on Wednesday.

Two amendments have been tabled – one calling to remove the proposals from the bill entirely, and the other to reinstate in-person consultations with a medical professional before abortion pills can be prescribed.

Concerned members of the Lords will attempt this week to vote down measures to decriminalise abortion after 24 weeks or without approval from doctors

MPs last year voted to decriminalise abortion ‘up to birth’, leaving women free to abort their baby for any reason

The ‘pills by post’ scheme has enabled women to access abortion pills without consulting their doctor.

In one case, 40-year-old Stuart Worby spiked a woman’s drink with abortion pills, leading her to suffer a miscarriage.

Both amendments are backed by a team of notable pro-life, pro-choice female peers, including former Olympian Baroness Davies, former Ofsted head Baroness Spielman and former president of the British Medical Association Baroness Hollins.

Baroness Monckton, who tabled the amendment to remove ‘clause 208’ from the bill wrote in this newspaper in February that the Commons-backed proposals were ‘reckless and radical’, with ‘implications both for the mental and physical health of the mother, and disastrous consequences for the child’.

Peers are now hopeful of voting the two Lords amendments through – meaning MPs will have to consider the changes when the bill returns to the Commons.

Catherine Robinson, spokesperson for Right To Life UK, said: ‘Peers opposed to the abortion up to birth proposals are increasingly optimistic of defeating them, particularly given the opposition of the now Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood to the proposals, and the whip that was issued by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch against the clause in the Commons.

‘Moderate pro-choice peers see the proposals as extreme.’

The bill will likely return to the Commons in April for before it achieves Royal Assent.