Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), called the current law "offensive and absurd".

A recent YouGov survey for BPAS found 66% of British adults don't think a woman should go to prison for ending a pregnancy without the permission of doctors.

"If we do not think we should lock up a woman desperate enough to buy abortion pills online because she cannot access lawful services, we should no longer accept a law which says we should," Furedi said.

What actually is the law on abortion in the UK?

Current law on abortion in the UK, which was written all the way back in 1861, states that a woman who seeks to "procure her own miscarriage" using "poison or other noxious thing", or "any instrument or other means whatsoever", is to be "kept in penal servitude for life".

This also applies to anybody who helps administer drugs to a woman seeking an abortion.

A mother in Northern Ireland is currently appealing a conviction under this law in the Supreme Court after obtaining abortion pills for her daughter, who was 15 years old at the time.

The mother was reported to police by her GP after admitting to providing the pills. In Northern Ireland, the Abortion Act 1967, the law that made abortion more accessible in England, Scotland, and Wales, was never applied.

How come women do get abortions in the UK then?

The Abortion Act 1967 was a groundbreaking amendment; previously, British women, who had previously faced a full-on abortion ban like that still faced by women in Ireland and Northern Ireland today.

But rather than make abortion legal, the amendment instead created an exception that meant that in certain circumstances women who had an abortion were not punishable. The procedure itself is still a criminal act.

The 1967 act states that "a person shall not be guilty of an offence under the law relating to abortion" if two doctors can agree in "good faith" that:

– in pregnancies up to 24 weeks carrying on with the pregnancy would pose a greater risk to the mother's physical or mental health, or to that of her existing children or family;

– the pregnancy poses a risk of grave permanent physical or mental injury to a women, or a risk to her life;

– or there is a substantial risk that the child will be born with severe physical or mental abnormalities.