Illegal terminations

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FIN/25/003285/G

Version Date: 17/06/2025

The Performance Analysis Department has provided the following information.

Data Source:

Niche crime information system

Data Processing:

Searches carried out for search for 14/01 & 14/02 which cover the below offences:

• Procure own miscarriage by poison / use of instrument
• Procure miscarriage of woman by poison / instrument
• Supply poison / noxious thing to cause miscarriage
• Supply instrument / thing to cause miscarriage
• Procure a poison / noxious thing to cause a miscarriage
• Attempt to procure a poison / noxious thing to cause a miscarriage
• Procure instrument / thing to cause miscarriage

Keyword searches also carried out for “Illegal abortion” in an attempt to capture some more results. This was manually reviewed and none were considered relevant.

• The number of criminal investigations opened by your police force into women on suspicion of illegally ending a pregnancy every year from 2016 to 2024
  • Please provide a single figure for each year (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), taking the date as the year the inquiry was opened
  •           Please also break down these yearly figures into 'no further action' OR 'charge made' OR 'investigation ongoing'
  •           Please do not include more than one entry where the same individual has been investigated more than once on suspicion of illegally ending their pregnancy
  
  

Searches found one occurrence; however, no investigation was opened as it occurred outside the Force area and the case was transferred to another force. This means there was a NIL return for your request.