Last Tuesday, MPs may have patted themselves on the back for voting to decriminalise abortion, after 379 (against 137) of them voted to amend the Crime and Policing Bill. But this is hardly "job done".

    A woman who terminates her own pregnancy outside of the 24-week rule (which remains in place under the 1967 Abortion Act) will not be prosecuted (under most circumstances). But anyone - health professional or not - who might be deemed to have helped her, remains under threat of a criminal charge and sentence.

    The amendment voted on is meant to remove women from the remit of the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act and the 1929 Infant Life Preservation Act - which are not repealed. And yes, a woman who accessed an abortion outside of the 1967 Act's restrictions could have faced up to a life sentence in prison. In fact in the past decade, more than 100 women have been prosecuted in England and Wales after an "unexplained pregnancy".

    But this bill has not actually decriminalised abortion; nor has it removed the restrictions under the 1967 Abortion Act which place obstacles (like the signed consent of two doctors) in the way of women needing to terminate a pregnancy. And although in 2022, due to Covid, terminations of pregnancies up to 10 weeks were allowed to go ahead after telephone consultation, the 1967 Act is not even being considered for amendment, nor full repeal.

    Already, obtaining an abortion on the NHS is nigh impossible (clinics are mostly private and costly), and the cuts are making this bad situation even worse. This minor Commons' amendment raised the issue once more and once more exposed why the fight for free abortion on demand, as a woman's unquestioned "right", is still very much "on".