Dear Editor,
As Antigua and Barbuda awaits a High Court ruling on the constitutionality of the country's abortion law, a significant development in the United Kingdom has added fresh momentum to the local debate. According to Antigua News Room, the UK Parliament has passed legislation to expunge the criminal records of all women convicted of abortion or attempted abortion offences dating as far back as the 1800s.
The move represents a formal public acknowledgment by the government that imposed those laws — the same legal framework Antigua and Barbuda inherited — that treating women's healthcare as a criminal matter was, in the words of advocates, folly, ineffective, unfair, and cruel.
England first legalised abortion broadly in 1967, nearly six decades ago. That legislative shift away from criminal punishment and toward public health education has shown measurable results: England's abortion rate now stands at 23 per 1,000 women, compared to 59 per 1,000 in Antigua and Barbuda. Now, Parliament's latest action goes further — offering a formal apology and clearing the records of women who were stigmatised emotionally and professionally, given the lasting damage a criminal conviction carries on one's career.
Antigua and Barbuda gained independence in 1981, yet chose to retain the archaic Offences Against the Person Act of 1861. That law remains on the books today.
The call for change is not without legal precedent. Almost 40 years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down a nearly identical abortion law as unconstitutional in R v Morgentaler [1988] 1 SCR 30. In 2017, the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland declared sections 58 and 59 of the same 1861 Act incompatible with Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
With those precedents established and the UK now moving to pardon those its own law once condemned, the writer urges that the High Court of Antigua and Barbuda seize the moment — and declare the abortion law unconstitutional.
