Trump’s Victory Poses A Very Real Threat To Abortion Access In The UK

Kamala Harris won’t be the first woman president of the US. The US election result that women — especially Black women and women of colour — around the globe feared has come to pass, and now we have to face four years of Donald Trump working in arguably the most important and influential job in the world — again. Many have rightly pointed out how much of this election has hinged on things that directly dismantle women’s rights — abortion care being the obvious place to look. The New York Times reported that in 2023, 171,300 people travelled across the country to access abortion care. According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortions in New Mexico — which borders Oklahoma and Texas, two states with a near-total ban on abortion — increased by 256% between 2020 and 2023. Holly Taylor-Dunn, an academic specialising in domestic and sexual violence, said the previous Trump administration had “roll[ed] back women’s rights by 50 years”.

An attack on women’s healthcare is an attack on women’s rights. You might be wondering, Where will it end? Right now, the truth is we don’t know. Just today it was announced that voters in Florida rejected an amendment to the state’s constitution that would have allowed abortions “before viability”. This is why we can’t be complacent in the UK. Although the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the subsequent attacks on abortion access feel far away, we can’t be blind towards the growing anti-abortion sentiment here.

Last month, in England and Wales, safe access buffer zones around abortion clinics came into force. In Scotland, they came into effect in late September, while Northern Ireland was a year ahead. This year the UK voted in a Labour government that plans to spend more on the NHS and support women going through menopause, increase childcare provision and raise the minimum wage (jobs paid at this rate are held more by women). However, at the same time, Kemi Badenoch has just been elected as the leader of the Conservative Party. Badenoch has actively spoken out against maternity pay, and opposed the new buffer zones. 

England and Wales is still operating under an 1861 law that criminalises abortion access. This specific law does not apply to Scotland but abortion is still technically a criminal offence there. In Northern Ireland, abortion was decriminalised in 2019. Refinery29 has been pushing for change for years with our I’m A Criminal campaign but progress remains slow: In 2022, two women faced trial for having abortions in the UK. In February the BBC reported that between 2018 and 2024, up to 60 women and people with wombs in England and Wales were investigated by police on suspicion of illegally terminating a pregnancy — before 2018, criminal inquiries of this kind were almost unheard of. Most shockingly, in 2023 a woman was sentenced to over two years in prison for taking abortion pills after the time limit (thankfully her sentence was reduced, suspended and she was released). After pressure from women’s healthcare groups, MPs had been due to vote on decriminalising abortion in England and Wales via the Criminal Justice Bill — but that vote was dropped due to the general election this year. The archaic law we operate under is still unamended. 

Katherine O’Brien, associate director at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), has previously told Refinery29 the situation here is serious. She said: “Over the last year [2021/2022] we have seen a number of clinics targeted by anti-abortion protests for the first time, indicating that this incredibly harmful activity is spreading. We know that anti-abortion activists in the UK have very close ties with their U.S. counterparts and will emulate their tactics in the hope of achieving the kind of ‘success’ they see in the revocation of Roe v. Wade. We are witnessing the Americanisation of anti-abortion activity in the UK and we can now very clearly see where it leads: to the rolling back of women’s rights.” In a new statement issued today, BPAS said: “When abortion access is restricted, women die. When the third largest country in the world rolls back abortion rights, we all suffer. [...] it weakens the progress we’ve fought for in every corner of the globe. It's no coincidence that alongside the anti-abortion movement fighting to overturn Roe v. Wade, the UK saw record-high police investigations into abortion-related offences and the most significant parliamentary attempt to roll back abortion access in decades.” They added that anti-abortion activists are “emboldened” by the election result. 

Although the majority of Brits support abortion access according to polling from YouGov, public opinion can change — especially when it’s influenced by the US. BBC Factual is due to broadcast a new documentary, Young, British and Anti-Abortion, looking at an emerging group of Gen Z who swing against the majority. Filmmaker Poppy Jay, who is behind the documentary, said in a statement: “Immersing myself in the UK Gen-Z anti-abortion movement was an eye opening experience. There was very little common ground and I think the abortion debate, with the way social media is being used as a weapon to polarise views, will continue to be one of the most divisive issues of not just our time but beyond.” We can’t guarantee that the tide won’t continue to turn against us, especially when the latest legal attempt to protect women (by including abortion in the Criminal Justice Bill) didn’t even get to the point of a vote.

With all the memes around his “eating the pets” speech, his fake tan and the slew of misinformation that made Kamala Harris roll her eyes during their presidential debate, many of us thought Trump was a laughing stock. We might be struggling to contemplate how deeply misogyny is entrenched that women in America voted for this man despite knowing his policies. But we can’t forget that our two nations are connected and that just as Trump turned back the clock on women’s rights in a few short years, the same could easily happen here. This isn’t to say we should give up or stand back — rather the opposite. It’s time we took a closer look at our healthcare, and our rights, here at home.