Jailed for abortion, Pacific warming and peerages
The News Meeting
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The Unusual Case of Abortion in the UK
The 1861 Act was enacted before women got the vote in this country. It says that every woman being with child who with intent to procure her own miscarriage shall unlawfully administer to herself any poison or other noxious thing. This is before there was any sophisticated understanding of how conception works. Sperm at this point was still considered a parasite and sperm at a zer had only just been given a name by a scientist. The fact that a law written at that time by men before women had any political agency is now being used to prosecute a woman in 2023 seems to me to be a mark.
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