The news follows the Royal College of Midwives launching a campaign last year calling for abortion to be decriminalised.

Organisations against abortion were quick to claim that keeping the procedure illegal is a form of “supporting women” and described the results of the vote as endorsing “an autonomy agenda” and “an extremist agenda in line with the abortion industry’s laissez faire up-to-birth attitude to ending the lives of unborn children.”

During the debate, some opposing the motion said they believed decriminalisation could put women in abusive relationships at risk of coercion, encourage sex-selective terminations and be comparable to procuring facial filler injections.

In a statement, a spokesperson for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) reiterated the BMA’s stance that all procedures will still be regulated and carried out safely: “Decriminalisation does not mean deregulation, or that abortions could be legally performed on women by unqualified individuals: it would simply mean that abortion could be governed in the same robust way as all other clinical procedures are in the UK today, and that doctors could provide woman-centred care according to the highest clinical standards, rather than legislation that is now 50 years old.

“It would also ensure that any woman who uses abortion medication without the authorisation of two doctors would no longer face the threat of life in prison, as is the case today.”

British Medical Association votes to make abortion legal in England and Wales