Number of people charged with offences relating to abortion and child destruction

Request

Could you please supply details on how many people have been charged with/convicted of any of the following offences between 2019 and 2023:

• Administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion (s. 58 OAPA 1861)
• Procuring drugs etc to induce an abortion (s. 59 OAPA 1861)
• Child Destruction (s1. Infant Life Preservation Act 1929)
  • Please break the figures down by year.
  • Please provide the sex of the person charged.
  • Please provide the age of the person charged.
  • Please provide the location/police force area of the person charged.
  • Please indicate whether they were convicted.
  • Please indicate whether the case is still ongoing or has been dropped, where relevant.
  • Please provide a brief description of the offence, where possible.

Response

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does hold some limited information within the scope of your request.

I attach for your reference an excel spreadsheet labelled ‘11585 DATA’ and the caveats appended to that data should be noted when considering that information.

In short, this data shows the three offences listed above (Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act {OAPA 1861} and Section 1 of the Infant Life Preservation Act 192) which reached a first hearing at a Magistrates’ court for the period 01 January 2019 to 31 March 2023 (in line with our publishing policy), broken down by year, CPS prosecuting area and said offence(s).

In order to locate the remaining information relevant to your request, namely the sex and age of the persons charged and the outcomes of those cases a manual review of all 15 cases outlined in the provided data set was undertaken and I can confirm the following, albeit these figures are not to be interpreted as official statistics as highlighted in the above-mentioned caveats:

1. 21 defendants were charged with the offences stated with the gender split being 16 Males and 5 Females
2. The age range of those defendants were between 24 and 59 years old
3. Two of the cases did not result in convictions for the stated offence
4. Ten defendants were convicted of the stated offences
5. Five defendants were not convicted of the stated offences but convicted on other substantive offences
6. Five defendants were not convicted of the stated offences
7. One defendant is subject to a warrant and awaits prosecution.

Furthermore, under section 16 of the FOI Act we have an obligation to advise what, if any, information may assist you with your request. You may also find it helpful to refer your request to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), as they are the official statistics holders of sentences imposed by the courts and they publish defendant data by specific offence, which may contain more detail than we can provide. You therefore may wish to submit a Freedom of Information request to them via the email address below:

data.access@justice.gov.uk