Abortion Rights Executive Member Wins Motion at Women’s TUC

A Major Victory for Reproductive Rights in the Trade Union Movement

Vicky Blake, an Executive Committee member of Abortion Rights and a trade unionist, successfully led a motion at the Women’s TUC, securing strong backing for the campaign to fully decriminalise abortion. This victory reaffirms that reproductive rights are trade union rights and that access to abortion must be protected from political interference, stigma, and restrictive laws.

What This Means for the Movement

The motion solidifies the TUC’s commitment to supporting free, safe, and legal abortion access. It calls for trade unions to take an active role in campaigning for decriminalisation, challenging misinformation, and ensuring that reproductive healthcare remains a protected right. This includes:

• Recognising abortion as a public health necessity, supported by major medical bodies.
• Pushing for full decriminalisation to remove abortion from criminal law in the UK.
• Educating trade union members about the intersection between far-right politics and attacks on bodily autonomy.
• Strengthening alliances with pro-choice and anti-fascist organisations.

Vicky Blake’s passionate speech at the conference highlighted the global threats to reproductive rights and the growing influence of anti-choice movements. She reminded delegates of the vital role unions have played in protecting abortion rights historically—and why they must step up again today.

Vicky Blake’s Speech at Women’s TUC

Chair, Conference, Vicky Blake, UCU. We ask you to cement our commitment to full decriminalisation of abortion. This is about reproductive justice, bodily autonomy – and the basic truth that abortion is healthcare, and abortion is a trade union issue.

Across the world, as the far right grows in confidence, they attack equality and zero in on bodily autonomy, seeking to roll back our hard-won rights.

The fall of Roe v Wade in the US threw the consequences of criminalisation under a brighter spotlight: persecution and fear are rife as pregnant people struggle to access or are denied life-saving healthcare, or face prosecution for pregnancy outcomes.

When the US rolls back rights at home, the consequences are exported globally. The Global Gag Rule—imposed and repealed with each change of government—has repeatedly cut off funding to vital reproductive health services worldwide. Clinics closed. Contraception and abortion care withdrawn. Education programmes collapsed. Those paying the price are the poorest and most marginalised, particularly women and girls in the Global South.

This is what happens when ideology governs healthcare. It’s why some boys started repeating ‘your body, my choice’. Our solidarity cannot end at the UK’s borders.

The global backlash demands a global response – but the same far-right playbook is in use in the UK: anti-choice groups are growing louder, richer, and more organised. We see their influence in attempts to weaken and delay buffer zones around clinics. Their rhetoric seeps into politics, providing cover to reactionary MPs keen to roll back our rights.

The same disturbing pattern is evident across Europe, with abortion rights under attack in Poland and Hungary, and access reduced through oppressive laws and deliberate restrictions on services.

Far-right forces target women, pregnant people, trans people, migrants, and workers—seeking to control who has the freedom to exist safely, to move freely, to organise collectively, and to make decisions about their own bodies.

These fights are not separate; we’re dealing with a backlash determined to strip away our equality and autonomy.

UK abortion laws are not fit for purpose. Abortion remains criminalised under legislation from 1861 in England, Scotland, and Wales, unless strict conditions are met. Scottish improvements to service delivery, such as early medical abortion at home are important, but still sit atop the same outdated criminal framework. And in Northern Ireland, despite legal reforms, barriers to access mean pregnant people are still often denied care they are entitled to by law.

In 2021, a 15-year-old girl was investigated by police after a stillbirth at 28 weeks. Her phone and laptop were confiscated during her GCSEs. This is the reality of criminalisation under current laws.

Until we achieve full decriminalisation, abortion rights will remain more vulnerable —at the mercy of stigma, legal and access barriers, and political interference.

Restricted access to abortion means working-class and marginalised people suffer most.

Stigma and harassment spill over into our workplaces, our communities, and our streets.

In our own movement, we have to be honest about the danger of complacency. Where trade unions organise, we create hope, solidarity, and power.

In 1979, when the Corrie Bill threatened abortion rights, trade unions mobilised 80,000 people onto the streets. We made a decisive difference.

We need to do it again.

This is not just a technical legal issue: it’s about power and control over our bodies. Decriminalisation means removing abortion from criminal law and trusting women and pregnant people—and healthcare professionals who support them—to make the right decisions, without fear of prosecution or punishment.

As trade unionists, we have a duty to stand up against those who would strip us of that control—whether through criminalisation, cuts to services, or harassment on the street.

So, we must take this fight into our workplaces and communities. We must work publicly and proudly with pro-choice and anti-fascist organisations. We must educate our members about the growing links between far-right politics and attacks on bodily autonomy. We must demand full enforcement of buffer zones and defend reproductive rights from any attempt to water them down.

Clearly and unapologetically, we must demonstrate that our movement will always defend bodily autonomy, healthcare, and equality.

Borrowing from Malcolm X, we are not outnumbered, but we must not be out-organised by the antis. Every delegation can go back to your union structures and demand an even more pro-active, decisive stance. Affiliate to Abortion Rights, get active on reproductive justice. Be loud: Abortion is healthcare. Abortion is a human right. Abortion is a trade union issue.

Please support and enact this motion.

Thank you.