Engender blog
Making the case for decriminalising abortion
The campaign to decriminalise abortion has gained momentum in recent months, and Engender has continued to advocate for change. We've pulled together a quick rundown of our recent work on this issue and the need for progress.
The Background
In England, women have been prosecuted and sentenced for procuring their own abortions, attracting media attention and leading to protests and other activities by advocates for reform.
Regulation of abortion care in Scotland is in urgent need of modernisation, with the current framework acting as a drag on services and as a barrier to timely access. The Scottish Government’s recent commitment to bring forward proposals to decriminalise abortion by the end of the parliamentary term (2026) has come on the back of increased scrutiny, policy and advocacy efforts by a range of stakeholders.
Why?
Abortion healthcare is vital to women's equality and wellbeing. It is a routine reproductive health procedure, with around one in three women needing an abortion in their lifetime in the UK.
Like most Scots, Engender supports women to make decisions about ending or continuing a pregnancy, and we’ve long called for change to ensure women’s reproductive rights are fully realised. Unfortunately, the current legal and regulatory regime means that women can be criminalised for procuring abortions, that two doctors need to authorise a woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy, and that this impacts treatment such that it does not always best meet women's needs.
What have we done so far?
Last September, we joined Abortion Rights Scotland to hold a webinar session on decriminalisation, which set out key arguments in terms of women’s equality, the perspective of clinicians, and the legal status quo. You can watch the webinar online here. Our submission in response to a public petition to decriminalise abortion, alongside other evidence gathered by the Petitions Committee earlier this year, highlights key arguments for decriminalisation and urges the Committee to seek further and fuller evidence following this petition.
Earlier this month, Engender joined with eight other organisations - focused on women’s equality, abortion rights and health - to discuss the Scottish Government’s recent commitments with the Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, Jenni Minto MSP. This followed a collective letter to the then-newly appointed First Minister in June, which was co-signed by 18 organisations, expressing our support for his commitment to remove abortion from the criminal justice system, and calling for an expert working group to support the development of proposals.
An expert working group
September’s Programme for Government contained a commitment to review of the current legal framework, and our call to create an expert working group has been accepted. The meeting with the Minister was a welcome opportunity to discuss this work, and to highlight the need for reform in terms of impacts on service provision and intersectional women’s equality and the importance of drawing on different women’s experiences of accessing abortion care.
What's next?
In terms of next steps, we focused on the need to act swiftly on establishing the review if we are going to see real progress by 2026, alongside transparent and established resourcing. We highlighted unintended consequences that have arisen internationally when reforming abortion law, with regards to access to services, and how this emphasises the need for lived experience input from different groups, alongside a broader focus on what the new regime will look like on the ground for women. Linked to this, we want to see the process rooted in established international human rights standards and norms, which make clear that abortion has no place in criminal law.
At Engender, we will be publishing a paper looking in detail at abortion within Scots law and different approaches that could be taken to achieve decriminalisation and a better service for women in Scotland. Please keep a look out for this and work around this important issue across Scotland in the months ahead.
Call for expert working group on decriminalisation of abortion accepted by Scottish Government
Abortion care in Scotland is in urgent need of modernisation, with the current framework acting as a drag on services and as a barrier to timely access. In June we wrote to the First Minister on abortion rights, alongside 16 other equalities, abortion and health organisations. In the letter, we welcomed the commitments made on the leadership campaign trail and called for creation of an expert working group on decriminalisation of abortion.
We are delighted that this suggestion has been accepted by Scottish Government. We now look forward to sharing how women in Scotland can feed into the review of current structures, and to Humza Yousaf’s commitment on decriminalisation being set out in this year’s Programme for Government. Read the letter and see a list of signatories below.
Dear First Minister,
We hope this letter finds you well and congratulate you on your appointment as First Minister of Scotland.
During your leadership campaign, we welcomed your commitments to protecting and advancing abortion rights. The implementation of nationwide buffer zones, consistent provision of abortion care for all that need it, and removal of abortion from the criminal justice system are vital elements of modern abortion healthcare in Scotland. We also need action to tackle growing capacity gaps across services, to ensure equality of access to person-centred abortion care, and to ensure that NHS staff are working in fully equipped and well-resourced services.
Steady progress has been made regarding abortion in recent years. The NHS Scottish Abortion Care Providers Group has worked closely with Scottish Government to advance commitments set out in the Women’s Health Plan, including early medical abortion at home, telemedical care, and improved provision of mid-term abortions across the country.
We now look forward to further progress under your leadership, and to working with the Scottish Government and Women’s Health Champion towards delivery of your commitments. We are aware that Scottish Government already has regular engagement with the NHS Scottish Abortion Care Providers Group, which will, of course, continue to be invaluable. Building on your commitment to move forward decriminalisation of abortion, we believe that an expert working group would be of assistance to Scottish Government Ministers on this topic, and would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further.
Women's sector calls on candidates to go further on gender equality
Yesterday, we joined with organisations from across the Scottish Women's Sector to write to the SNP leadership candidates, calling on them to commit to bringing about progressive change on gender equality that benefits not only women, but Scottish society. Read the letter and see a full list of signatories below.
As Scotland’s national women’s equality organisations, our ambition is for a Scotland in which substantive, intersectional gender equality is finally realised. To secure this, we need an approach to government that puts the experiences of diverse women, particularly marginalised and minoritised women, at the core of public policy development and implementation. This requires innovation, resources, and leadership to ensure that all women benefit equitably from public investment and services, that our safety and human rights are realised, that we can participate fully in culture and public life, and that our unpaid care and paid work are valued and compensated fairly.
GUEST POST: Divorce and Women’s Rights in Scottish History
Dr Rebecca Mason is a historian whose work focuses on Scottish legal and social history, and women’s legal rights. She is currently writing a book on ordinary women’s navigation of legal systems and property relationships in early modern Scotland. In this blog, Dr Mason explores the complex history of divorce law in Scotland in the context of married women’s rights.
For centuries, nothing determined a Scottish woman’s identity more than her marital status. For a woman living in Scotland during the sixteenth century, her legal rights were inextricably connected to her relationship to a man: as a daughter to a father, a wife to a husband, or a widow to a former husband. Whether a woman was single, married, or widowed greatly defined her legal, social and economic opportunities during a time when men’s laws ruled women’s lives.
Prior to key legislative changes in the nineteenth century, Scottish legal rules concerning married women’s rights restricted a wife’s ability to own property, control real estate, enter into agreements, or initiate litigation without her husband’s consent. In other words, a Scottish wife - whether she was living in the thirteenth century or the seventeenth century - could not ever act in law as an independent person. But what of those married women who broke these legal restrictions and fought lawsuits against their own husbands?
While the legalities of marriage and divorce continue to evolve today, it is fascinating to uncover how women in heterosexual relationships managed the breakdown of their marriages in Scotland hundreds of years ago, including how separating and divorcing women sought to protect their rights during a time when they were afforded few.
Incorporating CEDAW - what a new human rights bill could do for women in Scotland
Last week marked the start of Incorporation Fortnight – a two week campaign led by the Human Rights Consortium Scotland focused on human rights incorporation and a new human rights law for Scotland. In this blog, our Policy and Parliamentary Manager Eilidh Dickson explores incorporation of CEDAW and what it could mean for women in Scotland.
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Just before the May 2021 election, the then Scottish Government announced its intention to bring in a new human rights bill in the next parliament that would serve as a new human rights framework for Scotland.
Following years of work by the Taskforce on Human Rights and the Advisory Group on Human Rights, the Scottish Government accepted the recommendation that such a Bill should incorporate a range of international human rights treaties, including the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Most parties shared this commitment at the election and work on the bill is imminent.
Engender has long called for incorporation of CEDAW into Scots Law (read our report here) and we're excited to get to work on the bill process because of the opportunities we see for progressing substantive equality between women and men in Scotland. In this blog, we set out further what incorporation is and could mean for women in Scotland.
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