So it is a bit tricky because the UK has three legal systems (England & Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland), and so there are different legal regimes in each jurisdiction.
The system I quoted applies to Great Britain (England, Wales and Scotland).
Prior to 1967 two Acts of Parliament applied in England and Wales:
The
Offences against the Person Act 1861, in England and Wales, prohibits administering drugs or using instruments to procure an abortion (
section 58) and procuring drugs or other items to cause an abortion (
section 59), although subsequent law has provided for a range of grounds which allow abortion to be widely available.
The
Infant Life (Preservation) Act 1929 amended the law in England and Wales to create the offence of
child destruction – in cases where any person "who, with intent to destroy the life of a child capable of being born alive, by any wilful act causes a child to die before it has an existence independent of its mother". For the purposes of this Act, a child whose mother has been pregnant for 28 weeks is deemed "capable of being born alive". The 1929 Act also provides a defence where it is proved that causing the death of the child was "done in good faith for the purpose only of preserving the life of the mother."
The state of play is that abortion is a crime which can be punished if it is procured outside of the legal regime.
The Abortion Act 1967 decriminalised abortions in certain circumstances, which I quoted above.
The Act permits abortion "by a registered medical practitioner if two registered medical practitioners are of the opinion, formed in good faith".
So you need two doctors to agree 'in good faith' that one of the seven grounds applies. Legally, the doctors judgment will be judged against the profession's norms - doctors will determine the standard for doctors to be judged by, with the courts regulating and overseeing that.
If a doctor does not act in good faith, or does not satisfy the grounds, then they could be charged with child destruction or the other offences listed above. Doctors will generally act cautiously with borderline cases as a result.
We have 50 years of case law which helps - courts have made decisions interpreting the scope of each of the seven grounds, and was constitutes 'risk to the life of the mother' and so on.
This system is far more restrictive than the US system was. There, women had a right to an abortion.
In the UK, there is no such right, and doctors have to agree that the grounds are met (so a woman has to 'fit' her case into the law, and cannot assert a 'right to choose').
Northern Ireland now has a right to choose up to 12 weeks, making it more liberal than Great Britain (also politicians have dragged their feet and have not yet put the new law into practice).
well done.