Bishops Confront a Parked Rewrite of Scotland’s Abortion Law

Scotland’s Catholic bishops condemned a Green Party drive to recast abortion as ordinary healthcare on 3 October. Holyrood is now the last UK legislature where a woman can still be prosecuted for ending her own pregnancy. Bishop John Keenan of Paisley issued the rebuke five days after the Greens told ministers to open a consultation the SNP promised and then delayed.

Keenan leads the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland’s commission on marriage, family and life. He said the Greens’ line does not match what abortion is, and he urged MSPs to put money into maternity care and practical help for women rather than strip legal protection from the unborn.

Greens Tell Ministers to Open the Consultation

On 28 September, Safe Abortion Day, the Scottish Greens called on the government to decriminalise abortion as soon as possible. Kayleigh Kinross-O’Neill is the party’s health spokesperson and an MSP for Edinburgh and Lothians East, elected on 7 May 2026. She said the SNP’s Holyrood 2026 manifesto had already promised a consultation on the Abortion Law review chaired by Professor Anna Glasier, including decriminalisation within specified term limits.

The Scottish Government should get on with bringing forward this consultation on modernising abortion law. We need to make sure that abortion is decriminalised as soon as possible, access to abortion is a fundamental right and it should be treated like any other healthcare procedure.

Kayleigh Kinross-O’Neill, Scottish Greens health spokesperson, party statement

She called the two-doctor rule antiquated and said people should not have to give a reason for seeking abortion care. In modern Scotland, she added, there should be no criminal offences for anyone ending their own pregnancy. The party says Scotland is lagging behind the rest of the UK.

The Greens have about 10,000 members in a country of 5.6 million people. Co-leader Gillian Mackay already changed the law around clinics when she took the Abortion Services (Safe Access Zones) (Scotland) Act 2024 through Holyrood. This new demand is the next step in that programme, not a first raid on the 1967 settlement.

Most Abortions in Scotland Already Happen at Home

The fight is not about whether abortion is available. It is about the criminal shell around a service that, in practice, is already early, medical and often at home.

ABORTION IN SCOTLAND IN 2024

• The count: Public Health Scotland recorded 18,710 terminations in 2024, 3% more than 18,242 in 2023.
• The method: 57% involved taking both drugs at home, and only 3% were surgical. The expert group’s own figures put medical abortions at 96.8% and early medical abortions at home at 79.3%.
• How early: 79% of women reached services before nine weeks, down from 84% in 2021. The group recorded 14 abortions after 24 weeks, all on Ground E, which covers serious fetal abnormality.
• Who is affected: The rate in the most deprived areas was 24.5 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44, double the 12.2 rate in the least deprived areas. Average monthly demand rose 50% between 2015 and 2024.

Those numbers sit inside the Abortion Act 1967. Two doctors must still certify that a ground is met. For most cases that means Ground C or D, the comparison of risk to the woman’s physical or mental health if the pregnancy continues. After 24 weeks the grounds narrow, and in 2024 all 14 of those later abortions were Ground E. The group also counted 280 Ground E cases at any gestation.

The Glasier Report’s 36 Recommendations

Ministers set up the review in the 2023-24 Programme for Government, with a remit to treat abortion first and foremost as a healthcare matter. Glasier, Scotland’s Women’s Health Champion, chaired an expert group of clinicians, lawyers, academics and women’s organisation representatives. The independent expert group report was published on 14 November 2025. The group said the current law is not fit for purpose and called the grounds-based model anachronistic and paternalistic.

Its first recommendation is to keep the existing 24-week limit for most abortions. The rest of the package is the rewrite the Greens want ministers to consult on.

CURRENT LAW AND THE GLASIER PACKAGE

The full list of 36 recommendations on abortion law also drops mandatory counselling and waiting periods, removes the duty to notify the Chief Medical Officer, and repeals the Concealment of Birth (Scotland) Act 1809. Recommendation 6 says updated legislation should make no specific reference to sex-selective abortion. That line, more than the 24-week recommendation, is what Keenan has used to argue that the package opens the door to abortion for any reason, including sex.

Scotland Is the Last UK Nation With This Offence

Abortion law was devolved to Holyrood in 2016. A decade later the 1967 Act still supplies the grounds, the two-doctor rule and the statutory right to refuse. Outside that Act, ending a pregnancy can still be treated as a common-law crime in Scotland. That is the offence Kinross-O’Neill called outrageous, and it is the offence England, Wales and Northern Ireland have already taken off women.

HOW THE REST OF THE UK MOVED

1. 1967: The Abortion Act legalises abortion on specified grounds in Scotland, England and Wales, with two doctors certifying.
2. 2016: Holyrood takes control of abortion law. The 1967 framework stays in force.
3. 2019: Northern Ireland decriminalises abortion.
4. 2024: Scotland’s Safe Access Zones Act keeps protesters away from clinics, with Mackay as the member in charge.
5. June 2025: The Commons votes to remove women acting in relation to their own pregnancies from abortion offences in England and Wales.
6. 2026: The Crime and Policing Act 2026 gives that vote statutory force. Scotland is left as the only UK nation where a woman ending her own pregnancy can still be a crime.
7. 14 November 2025: Glasier’s group publishes its 36 recommendations, including a clean repeal of offences for anyone ending their own pregnancy.
8. 28 September 2026: The Greens tell ministers to open the promised consultation.
9. 3 October 2026: Keenan issues the bishops’ reply.

The English and Welsh change did not repeal the 1967 Act as a service code. It took specified criminal liability off the woman herself, at any gestation. Providers still work inside the Act. The Scottish group’s recommendation 27 is the same move for women, plus a repeal of common-law offences. Recommendation 32 would still make it an offence for someone who is not a registered healthcare professional to provide abortion as a business.

Why the Government Has Parked Its Own Review

The SNP won the 7 May 2026 election with 58 of 129 seats, seven short of the 65 needed for a majority. John Swinney was re-elected first minister on 19 May and chose a minority government rather than another formal deal with the Greens. Labour and Reform UK tied on 17. The Conservatives have 12 and the Liberal Democrats 10. The Greens rose from 8 seats in 2021 to a record 15 Green seats at Holyrood, including their first constituency wins in Edinburgh Central and Glasgow Southside. SNP and Green MSPs together number 73, an independence majority they are not using as a governing bloc.

From 2021 to 2024 the Greens held two ministerial posts in an SNP-led government, the first Green ministers anywhere in the UK. They did not deliver this rewrite then. They are now trying to force the consultation from outside the cabinet, with more MSPs than they had in that coalition and less purchase on the government diary.

Swinney’s manifesto promised a consultation on Glasier’s recommendations, including decriminalisation within specified term limits. Keenan, in a 3 September statement, said the government had indicated it has no immediate plans to reform abortion law in 2026-27, while still intending to consult and to establish a nationally commissioned later-stage abortion service. The bill can wait. The service expansion does not have to.

That split is the practical politics. A consultation can be opened without a majority. A bill to repeal common-law offences, rewrite grounds and place a duty on health boards cannot. Reform UK’s 17 MSPs and the Conservatives’ 12 give opponents of liberalisation a larger Holyrood bloc than they had in the last session, even as the Greens had their best night.

A Duty to Provide and a Duty to Refer

Treating abortion as ordinary healthcare is the slogan. The machinery sits in three clauses most of the public argument has not named.

WHO THE REWRITE WOULD CHANGE

• Women: Recommendation 27 removes offences for anyone ending their own pregnancy and repeals common-law offences. That is the last-UK-nation question, and it is separate from the 24-week cap on most clinic abortions.
• Nurses and midwives: Recommendation 7 lets any appropriately trained registered healthcare professional provide abortion at all gestations, not only doctors. Certification before 24 weeks goes. After 24 weeks two professionals, not necessarily two doctors, must agree.
• Staff who refuse: Section 4 of the 1967 Act says no person shall be under any duty, by contract or by any statutory or other legal requirement, to participate in treatment authorised by the Act to which they have a conscientious objection. The group would keep a similar clause, delete “by contract”, and add a duty on objectors to refer the patient on. The Supreme Court in Greater Glasgow Health Board v Doogan and Wood already confined the right to actually taking part in the treatment, not supervising it.
• Ministers and boards: Recommendation 26 puts a duty to provide abortion services, described as a right to abortion, on Scottish ministers and health boards. That is the opposite of a conscience clause. It is a statutory requirement to run the service.
• The 1809 Act: Recommendation 28 repeals the Concealment of Birth (Scotland) Act 1809 and the crime of concealment, a Georgian offence sitting beside the abortion rules and almost never discussed in the slogans.

The “healthcare” line does that work. Once abortion is aligned with other procedures, the special criminal overlay becomes harder to defend, the special right to refuse has to be rewritten rather than assumed, and the state takes on a duty to supply the service. Keenan’s attack on the slogan is aimed at that shift, even when he puts it in the language of the unborn child.

Do the Proposals Allow Abortion Up to Birth?

The published report’s first recommendation is to keep the 24-week limit for most abortions. After that point two healthcare professionals would have to agree an abortion is appropriate, except where one professional believes it is immediately necessary to save the woman’s life. The bishops say that test, plus the decision to name no sex-selection ban, would in practice permit abortion up to birth for any reason.

The Bishops’ Conference of Scotland is deeply concerned by renewed calls to decriminalise abortion in Scotland and to remove existing legal safeguards governing the ending of unborn human life. These proposals would permit abortion up to birth for any reason, including sex-selective abortion.

Bishop John Keenan, President of the Marriage, Family and Life Commission, Bishops’ Conference of Scotland

Keenan said the Greens’ claim that abortion should be treated like any other healthcare procedure “simply does not match the brutal reality of abortion, which is the deliberate ending of an innocent, defenceless human life.” He said the act can never be regarded as simply another healthcare intervention, nor described as safe. Medicine exists to heal, protect and care for human life, the statement said.

The group’s own wording on later abortions is not “any reason”. It is “appropriate”, decided in good faith by two registered professionals. Critics read “appropriate”, together with the patient’s social circumstances, as a hole in the 24-week wall. Supporters read it as a clinical judgement for a tiny caseload: 14 abortions after 24 weeks in 2024, all already done on Ground E. Those are two readings of the same clause, and they will be the consultation’s real argument if ministers ever issue one.

On sex selection, recommendation 6 is explicit: no specific reference in updated legislation. Glasier has said the package is not about legalising sex-selective abortion and is about taking women out of the criminal law before 24 weeks and letting them decide on an unwanted pregnancy. The bishops call the silence astonishing and say it paves the way for abortions because a baby is the wrong sex. The group’s published position is that a specific ban is not in the draft they sent ministers.

The bishops’ alternative is not a new criminal clause. They asked for greater investment in maternity services, perinatal mental health support, family assistance programmes, pregnancy counselling, and practical support for women facing challenging pregnancies. “There is a better way than abortion,” Keenan said. He also said a just society should protect mother and child, especially when either is vulnerable, and that debate in Scotland often talks only of autonomy and choice while skipping the rights of those who cannot speak.

The consultation the SNP put in its manifesto has not opened. The later-stage service the government says it will commission does not need that bill to start.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a live political and legal debate in Scotland. It is for information only and is not medical, legal or counselling advice, and it does not tell any reader whether to continue or end a pregnancy or how a clinician should apply the Abortion Act 1967. Anyone facing a pregnancy decision, a possible criminal investigation, or a conflict over conscientious objection should consult a qualified doctor, a solicitor, or a regulated counsellor before acting. Counts, recommendations and party positions reflect the official documents and statements cited and may change if ministers open a consultation or publish a bill.