Engender blog
29 Organisations Urge Police Scotland to Reject “Disgraceful” Abortion Investigation Guidelines
This week, we united with 28 other women’s rights, health, and human rights groups to condemn UK police guidance that subjects grieving women experiencing pregnancy loss to criminal investigation.
We have written to Chief Constable Jo Farrell calling on Police Scotland to publicly reject controversial new guidelines that could subject women experiencing pregnancy loss to invasive criminal investigations, under existing abortion laws.
The signatories – spanning women’s rights groups, abortion care providers and campaigners, healthcare bodies, human rights and equalities organisations and trade unions – have joined us in condemning the UK National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) guidance on child death investigation as “disgraceful” and “misogynistic by design.”
The updated guidance, comes after a dramatic upswing in abortion related investigation and prosecution of women in England and Wales. Earlier this week the UK Parliament moved to halt criminal sanctions against women for terminating their own pregnancies via a successful amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill.
However, as this legislation only relates to England and Wales, a lack of clarity remains on whether these guidelines could still apply or be used in Scotland. Data published last year by Engender found that several abortion related cases have been pursued by police in Scotland in the last two decades.
Speaking about the need for action north of the border, our Executive Director of Engender, Catherine Murphy said:
“Women now find themselves in the perilous situation where the laws governing abortion in Scotland have not kept up with advancements like abortion medicines and reproductive tracking apps. Police Scotland, the Crown Office and Scottish Parliament need to act urgently to end the scope for prosecutions and bring the law into the 21st century.”
“The NPCC guidance describes women being targeted as ‘criminal suspects’ during one of the most sensitive and vulnerable experiences of their lives – pregnancy loss. It’s unconscionable.”
The controversial NPCC guidelines outline scope for highly invasive investigation techniques including:
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Searching women’s homes and treating them as crime scenes
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Confiscating digital devices and reviewing personal data
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Accessing medical records and reproductive tracking apps
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Subjecting families to criminal investigation during bereavement
Healthcare leaders have been unanimous in their opposition. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists described the guidance as “shocking,” and clinicians warn it creates a “climate of fear” among healthcare staff.
“Women experiencing pregnancy loss need compassionate care, not criminal investigation,” said Dr Sinead Cook, Chair of the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, Scotland Committee. “These methods violate fundamental rights to dignity, privacy and healthcare.”
The letter warns that marginalised communities – including those in poverty, women of colour, disabled women, migrants, young women, LBT+ people, and those in rural areas – would be disproportionately impacted by such investigations. Evidence from England shows similar police actions have caused “life-changing harm,” resulting in severe mental health impacts, debt, and children taken into custodys.
The World Health Organisation has explicitly called on governments to stop arrests, investigations and prosecutions for abortion and to suspend the criminal law being applied to pregnancy loss – a position supported by every major UK medical body.
Signatories call on Police Scotland to:
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Publicly clarify that NPCC recommendations on abortion and stillbirth will NOT be adopted in Scotland
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Develop new guidance creating an effective moratorium on abortion investigations, aligned with WHO recommendations
“Police Scotland has a choice,” said Jill Wood, Policy Manager at Engender, “They can follow the lead of health experts and human rights bodies, or they can adopt guidance that will cause demonstrable harm to women in Scotland. We urge them to choose compassion over criminalisation.”
Signatories include Engender, Abortion Rights Scotland, Young Women’s Movement, Back Off Scotland, Humanist Society Scotland, Close the Gap, Scottish Women’s Convention, Scottish Women’s Budget Group, Zero Tolerance, Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Abortion Care Providers Network, Faculty for Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare Scotland, Amnesty International UK, Scottish Women’s Aid, Royal College of Midwives, STUC, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, Equality Network, Scottish Trans, Equate Scotland, Human Rights Consortium Scotland, British Pregnancy Advisory Service, Women’s Enterprise Scotland, Liberty, Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights, Amma Birth Companions, NUS Scotland, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE), Inclusion Scotland.
Making women safer in Scotland: the case for a standalone misogyny offence
Today Engender has released a report calling for misogyny to be considered as a criminal offence in Scotland in order to challenge the epidemic of harassment and abuse facing women and girls.
The Scottish Government is currently reviewing the law around hate crime in Scotland, and is deciding between introducing a ‘gender hostility’ aggravation - adding gender or sex to the list of characteristics already covered by hate crime legislation- and the creation of a standalone offence. Our report shows that a ‘gender hostility’ aggravation will not solve the problem of misogyny, and may in fact undermine existing policy designed to tackle domestic abuse and other forms of violence against women.
For example, a gender aggravation
might be applied to one incidence of domestic abuse, but not another,
meaning that one would be treated more seriously by the court. This is
inconsistent with feminist analysis, echoed in Equally Safe, Scotland’s violence against women strategy, which says that gender inequality is inextricably linked with violence.
GUEST POST: Abortion Legislation in Latin America
Belén González Leggire is an Uruguayan journalist with a master's degree in gender studies and public policy. She was born in Montevideo, and is been living in Edinburgh since 2017. The topics she has investigated over the past years have included sexual violence against women during military coups and the design of social care services in Europe and South America. She is a member of WomenBeing, a research network for the promotion of gender studies.
Here, she writes about abortion legislation in Latin America, where women can be sent to prison for illegally terminating a pregnancy or even for suffering a spontaneous miscarriage.
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2018 was yet another year with much to think about for the feminist. In May, Ireland finally repealed the Eighth Amendment, a subsection of their 1983 Constitution that gave the equal right to life of the pregnant woman and the fetus. This cruel law has made termination illegal in the country for the last 35 years. Simultaneously, in South America, Argentina had the chance to join the small group of countries in the region which legalise abortion. Unfortunately, this did not happen. And despite the “#EleNão” (#NotHim) campaign - a social media movement of women rallying against inequality and the election of Far Right a presidential candidate - Jair Bolsonaro won the elections in Brazil, resulting in the country giving the far right more power in the region as a whole.
Women’s organisations disappointed by Lord Bracadale’s recommendations, seek further dialogue with Scottish Government
Engender, Rape Crisis Scotland, and Scottish Women’s Aid are disappointed by the recommendations in the inquiry’s report. The question of how to tackle misogynistic online abuse, sexual harassment in public spaces, and incitement to misogyny is one being raised worldwide. Women and girls face epidemic levels of misogynistic hate in schools, in the workplace, on city streets, and online. We called for a standalone misogynistic hate crime to be created in Scotland as a way of disrupting this epidemic.
On the Engender: Women in Scotland's criminal justice system
This month I was privileged to host our podcast recording on women in the criminal justice system. Even though Scotland incarcerates more women than almost any other country in Northern Europe, this is an area which I’m ashamed to say I hadn’t given much thought before working for Engender*.
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