Tonia Antoniazzi On Decriminalising Abortion: "The Woman Is The Priority"

Tonia Antoniazzi (Photography by Tom Pilston)

Sienna Rodgers

@siennamarla

Nicola Packer was still bleeding when she was arrested in hospital, the day after having a stillborn baby at home. It was 2020, the Covid era, and the then-41-year-old had used the pills-by-post scheme, under which medication is provided remotely for at-home abortions. At about 26 weeks pregnant, however, Packer was beyond the 10-week limit for telemedicine.

It was alleged that Packer knew she had been pregnant for longer than 10 weeks and the prosecution went ahead. She denied that and – after a lengthy investigation – was found not guilty five years later.

In mid-June, the month after that verdict, the Labour MP for Gower Tonia Antoniazzi put forward an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to decriminalise abortion. It passed easily. Once the bill completes its stages in Parliament, a woman will not be committing an offence by ending her pregnancy at any time.

While the Abortion Act’s 24-week limit is unaffected, Antoniazzi’s amendment is a hugely significant legal and societal change, arguably on par with assisted dying – but with a quick debate and short-notice vote, the reform has received far less attention.

“I knew I was doing the right thing when I met Nicola,” says Antoniazzi, who spent a day in court to watch Packer’s trial. “I just can’t believe that any woman has had to be put through the trauma of the birth that she had to go through, and the treatment that she had, but also the ongoing financial and emotional trauma that that court case caused her.”

That day in court, they scrutinised Packer’s internet history. “Literally, reading it line by line, all the browsing history that she’d been looking at on her phone, from the point that she thought she might be pregnant up until the actual foetus passing,” the MP recalls.

“You could feel the anxiety getting worse and worse and worse, because she knew there was something wrong. She was searching for whether it was cervical cancer, was this a later term pregnancy, all of these things, and that anxiety… You put yourself in that position and think, how would you feel if that was you? I just couldn’t, and I don’t know how she held it together.”

Antoniazzi has sent Packer a Hansard copy of the debate, with a note to make clear that it was her case that drove the change in the law. She hopes it will be referred to as “Nikki’s Law”: “She deserves it.”

While opposition to the move in Parliament has been limited, and media coverage low on these exceptionally busy news days, the decriminalisation of abortion at any point during pregnancy has generated some controversy. The MP who spearheaded the reform insists detractors do not understand it.

“This is not abortion up to 40 weeks. That misinformation and misinterpretation of what we’ve done I have found quite hard to cope with, because people do think I think it’s OK [to abort up to 40 weeks], and I don’t think it’s OK,” Antoniazzi asserts.

“What I think is, we have to put the priority of the woman up front and centre, and look after her needs. Because there will always be a reason why something has happened, and that reason needs to be explored. The woman shouldn’t be criminalised.”

Some hold that the law, as well as providing a practical function, sets a moral standard. Decriminalising an act thus sends a signal to society that it is acceptable. The MP counters simply: “We haven’t said it’s OK. We’ve said women are being decriminalised.”

Antoniazzi went to a Catholic school, where her father was the deputy head. She remembers watching abortion videos and being “chastised” by teachers for holding an “alternative view”. She disagreed with them even then? “I did, because it was wrong. There I was, in my cookery class, having the TV hauled in; ‘put this on now’. It was awful.”

Those who oppose her amendment also argue that if pills-by-post had not been extended beyond the pandemic, as a majority of MPs decided to do in 2022, there would not have been the rise in prosecutions seen over the last five years. Critics contend that the scheme makes both innocent mistakes and coercion more likely.

One MP who voted against decriminalisation says they suspect that those lobbying for telemedicine to continue are doing so because it is cheaper to run an abortion service this way. Its advocates, meanwhile, say pills are safe, effective, easy to access and reduce waiting times.

“They’re trying to push an agenda which is pro-life and anti-women,” Antoniazzi says of the critics. “If we didn’t have telemedicine, we wouldn’t be able to see these women, because we do not have the capacity in the NHS to be able to have face-to-face meetings with these women.”

Decriminalisation exposed a divide among pro-choice feminists – between those who support a legal right to abortion for safety reasons, and those who back it because they believe pregnancy should not limit a woman’s bodily autonomy. To which camp does Antoniazzi belong? Is hers a practical stance or a principled one?

“I’ve seen some feminists who share my views on other things come out and speak against the amendment. To me, that flies in the face of feminism,” she replies. (Asked later about gender-critical women such as Hadley Freeman and Kathleen Stock – her allies in the battle over sex and gender – speaking out against her amendment, Antoniazzi says: “My jaw fell.”)

“The priority is the woman. The woman is alive. The woman has a right to be protected in the law. Because whether it’s coercion, domestic violence, whatever it is, there will be a reason why she has found herself in that situation.”

Sarah Catt was jailed in 2012 for aborting at 39 weeks with pills bought online, believing that the father was a man with whom she was having a long-term affair, rather than her husband. She was described by police as “cold and calculating”. While this kind of case is obviously highly unusual, does Antoniazzi believe that Catt, too, should not have been prosecuted?

“Who else was involved in that? Did she do it by herself?” the MP asks in response. “I personally think that she has some very severe mental health issues. If you can be cold and callous, you need to be helped and you need to be taken out of the criminal system.”

This response could surely apply to all sorts of crimes. Indeed Antoniazzi confirms that wider justice reform appeals to her: while Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has set up a Women’s Justice Board to reduce the number of women in prison, the backbencher calls for “a review of the female estate”.

“You’d probably find that we could reduce the numbers of women in prison because their crimes are nowhere near as violent or as heinous as men’s crimes. There’s a wider argument here – not for saying that women are innocent, that’s a ridiculous thing to say – but that women, I would say, the large majority of the time, find themselves in vulnerable situations where they need help and support, rather than being thrown behind bars.”

A rival amendment tabled by Stella Creasy last month would have made abortion a human right and protected medical professionals involved in abortions outside of the legal limits. It did not come to a vote, however, having fallen away once Antoniazzi’s proposal – called ‘NC1’, meaning New Clause 1 – was passed. Although Antoniazzi disagreed with the Creasy alternative, she said there should be “wider reform” of UK abortion laws. She tells The House she would probably not lead such efforts, however.

“Stella wanted abortion to be a human right in principle. It was a difficult concept for the time, for the parliament. This was the Crime and Policing Bill. There does need to be wider reform. Would I spearhead it? Maybe not, because I knew that this is what I wanted to achieve.”

“Opening the Abortion Act at this stage in the parliament wouldn’t be the right thing to do,” she adds decisively. As a Welsh MP and chair of the Northern Ireland Select Committee, her focus is instead on provision, with abortion services being much more limited in the two devolved nations.

Antoniazzi also co-sponsored the assisted dying bill introduced by Kim Leadbeater. A year ago, with Labour winning such a big majority, one would have expected the most dramatic legislation in this parliament to come from the government driving through its own agenda. Instead, fascinatingly, so far it is backbenchers who have produced the most memorable and perhaps consequential changes to the law.

The Gower MP is speaking to The House soon after the welfare rebellion, which sent the government spiralling. Many backbenchers held Keir Starmer and his aversion to party management directly responsible for the chaos.

“I don’t think this is necessarily a Keir thing. I’ve been an MP for eight years. We know his manner, his leadership style – it’s what the country voted for,” counters Antoniazzi, who entered Parliament in 2017 under Jeremy Corbyn, but was never a Corbynite. She nominated Jess Phillips for the leadership in 2020.

“It’s a challenge to get around all the MPs. But I think it’s the team around him as well that maybe needs to be more in listening mode and getting the right messages to him and to Cabinet.”

Antoniazzi, 53, was born in Llanelli to a Welsh mother and Welsh-Italian father. She studied French and Italian at university, and later taught languages at a comprehensive; as we take pictures, she speaks with a moustachioed doorkeeper in beautiful Italian. Before life as a teacher and single mum, she won nine caps for Wales women’s national rugby union team.

“You brought up morality in law. Because of my background, I’ve got very strong morals,” she says, reflecting on her Catholic background. “And it’s something I think about all the time. My personal experience with losing my father, and my mother is terminally ill – I did sponsor the bill, and I’ve spoken about assisted dying a lot. I’ve got some very upset constituents that took me around the hospice, explained to me why this law wasn’t going to work.”

Her brothers, also raised Catholic, support legalising assisted dying too. One lives in New Zealand, where it is legal, but the other, who works in the hospice sector, “sees the difficulties with the assisted dying bill”. “He, in principle, supports the liberal view of assisted dying, but also sees the practicalities, which is why, for me, it is very important that we get it right,” she says thoughtfully. 

For a co-sponsor of the bill, she seems remarkably open-minded about its future, going on to say that “if eventually it doesn’t pass, then maybe it doesn’t pass, but let’s just see – it deserves to be debated”.

“It’s going to go to the House of Lords. Things are going to change again. It may look like a completely different bill by the time it comes back. But I do support a person’s right to have their own voice over their own passing.”

“People paint you as a monster... Sometimes you think: have I got the strength to do it?”

It is interesting, I suggest, that both of her core interests right now are centred on bodily autonomy. Here, Antoniazzi’s eyes well up; she apologises for becoming emotional.

“Life is wonderful. Life is great. Having a baby – my own son, he’s 21 now, he’s a pain in the bum, but it is an absolute joy and a gift. And people think that I don’t think it’s a gift.

“My mum is alive – she wouldn’t want assisted dying. My father wouldn’t have wanted it either. But each day is a gift. She sits on the sofa, she has a dog, she goes for a walk, she eats nice things, and she sees all of her friends and family. It’s a gift. So, I don’t think…”

As tears stream down her face, the glasses get pushed up to her head. I offer a pause. She takes a moment.

“People paint you as a monster,” Antoniazzi continues. “Just because we’ve been trying to change the law in this way so that women are decriminalised, and also that people have that choice at the end of life. I think it’s a really powerful societal thing to do. To have the strength to be able to do that. Sometimes you think: have I got the strength to do it? Why am I doing it?

“When I met Nicola Packer, that changed me. When I lost my dad, it changed me, because he had the choice taken away from him. Your quality of life is very important. And I know, and I genuinely believe, that you should make those decisions. That’s why I do what I do. Must be off my head!” she laughs.

While Antoniazzi has boundless enthusiasm for her chosen projects, she also feels criticism deeply – from abortion to assisted dying, to her gender-critical views. “You can tell I was a teacher for 20 years, trying to keep all the kids happy in class,” she quips.

“I am pleased that NC1 passed, right? I’m really over the moon. I’m pleased that assisted dying has got over the line and we’ll move on. And I’m really pleased about the Supreme Court judgment,” Antoniazzi says, referring to its recent ruling on the definition of woman in the Equality Act. “But I don’t delight in it.” 

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