Phantom Crimes Are Still Crimes

Britain's mother of parliaments has passed a law to end the prosecution of women who terminate their own pregnancies, and also to pardon, if not exonerate, those who have done so in the past. Given that the police are still arresting people under a statute which the High Court has declared unlawful, it remains as yet unclear whether they intend to halt current investigations into abortion cases merely because anyone convicted is likely to be immediately and automatically pardoned. Abortion-related arrests are apparently still being made, though not quite so many as under the law against graphological terrorism; so not many prison cells are likely to be freed up for all those Quaker grandmothers and suchlike enemies of the state.