Illegal terminations

Freedom of Information (FOI) Act request ref: 01/FOI/25/008265/W

Version Date: 17/06/2025

The Performance & Analysis Department has provided the following information.

Data Source:

Niche crime information system

Data Processing:

Cancelled crimes excluded, Non notifiable crimes excluded                                                  

Qliksense Report: Crime and Outcomes                                                

Filtered by date: 1 April 2020 to 31 December 2024                                                    

Home Office Group Desc: Procure Illegal Abortion                                                                                                                

Qliksense Report: Occurrence - People Links (all)                                                       

Filtered by crimed date: 1 January 2016 to 31 March 2020                                        

HO Description: Procuring Illegal Abortion                                                        

Data Limitations:

The Crime and Outcomes report data is unavailable prior to 1 April 2020.

• 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 were carried out but do data was found to match your request. A single crime was found of procuring illegal abortion in 2022, but the outcome was ‘Suspect identified – evidential difficulties’ so it does not match your criteria.