Since its introduction in 1861, three women had been prosecuted under the law. That was until 2022. Since November 2022, six women have appeared in court charged with ending or attempting to end their own pregnancy outside of the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act, which made abortion legal in certain, fixed circumstances.
Prosecutions for ending a pregnancy are rising because a well-funded international anti-abortion lobby is taking advantage of our current political moment. Funding and strategies flow freely between anti-abortion groups in Britain and the US. They’re emboldened by Donald Trump’s presidency in the US and the growing popularity of Nigel Farage, the Reform party leader who’s already talking about rolling back abortion laws in Britain.
The power of the anti-abortion movement relies on the fact that, culturally, we don’t publicly talk abortion as healthcare. Instead, it’s still understood as a moral debate between two opposing ‘sides’.
This won’t change until we shift our cultural norms around abortion, to treat it as an essential healthcare intervention. We also need to address the real, tangible ways that people may be blocked from accessing an abortion, even if it were fully decriminalised.
Treating abortion as healthcare, by decriminalising it, means that both the person having the abortion and the person providing it are protected. There are two recent cases which prove why this is important:
There’s no legal duty for medics to report suspected crimes, and the midwife was in breach of patient confidentiality for reporting Nicola. A senior Metropolitan police officer even expressed concern about whether the developing investigation was best for Nicola. The CPS proceeded. She endured four years of investigation and trial while the media dissected her life – and was found not guilty in April 2025.
This happened because the midwife stepped outside her role as a healthcare professional and became an agent of the state, reinforcing criminalisation despite having no legal responsibility to act. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists have since issued guidance to discourage midwives from doing this.
Hospital staff determined that ending Adriana’s life support would be in breach of the state of Georgia’s abortion law. Their decision conflicts with the legal opinion of the state Attorney General’s office, which said that “removing life support is not an action with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy,” therefore not breaching the law.
Healthcare professionals acting as agents of the state are also impacting trans people’s access to gender-affirming care. In the UK, the NHS is increasingly withdrawing or refusing trans people’s access to hormone replacement therapy (HRT).
These connected attacks on abortion and transition care are happening against a cultural backdrop of intensifying efforts to reassert control over our bodies. They serve a clear purpose: to constrain us into performing gender in narrow and specific ways, according to the sex we were assigned at birth. And they have the legal scope to punish us when we don’t.
When Level Up says “abortion is healthcare”, we mean that abortion should be treated exactly like any other medical procedure – available in hospitals and GP surgeries, delivered by healthcare professionals without fear of prosecution, and accessible to patients without criminal investigation. This requires full decriminalisation: removing abortion entirely from the criminal code, including protections for healthcare providers.
In the cases of Nicola and Adriana, healthcare providers were, at best, being risk-averse about their own legal accountabilities. At worst, their decisions reflected personal moral and political influences. This is exactly why even well-intentioned attempts at partial decriminalisation aren’t enough.
If full decriminalisation was in place, there would be no ambiguity about how these situations should be handled.
Level Up knows that culture change always precedes policy change. That’s why we take a pop culture approach to campaigning for the full decriminalisation of abortion. Until we shift public understanding of abortion as healthcare, there won’t be enough public support to achieve the full decriminalisation that we need.
We’re also challenging our culture of shame and stigma by mobilising public solidarity with people who have abortions, and encouraging people to tell their stories, normalising the full spectrum of experiences around ending pregnancies.
Abortion is healthcare — yet in Britain it remains criminalised, enabling rising prosecutions, surveillance and stigma. Criminalisation harms patients and providers, and anti-abortion forces exploit this moment. Full decriminalisation and cultural change are urgently needed.