NEXT year will mark a half-centenary for the Abortion Act 1967, a key turning point for women’s rights in Britain. Many of us sigh with relief at having won this debate, particularly when we look across the Atlantic, where pro-life hate mobs exert mainstream political influence, where sounding “tough on abortion” is just about the best way to boost your poll numbers.

But it would be naïve to imagine the debate is completely over. Even today, militant pro-lifers pose a threat to women’s rights here too.

This year, a working-class 19-year-old woman in Belfast found herself with an unwanted pregnancy, and didn’t have the money to travel to England for a termination. So, she bought drugs to induce a miscarriage. She must have thought most of the ordeal was over, but her housemates found out and reported her to the police. Under Northern Ireland’s laws, she was prosecuted, punished with a suspended sentence and was therefore branded a criminal.

It’s the first time in a while I’ve cried reading a news story. The cruelty of her gossiping flatmates, during what must have felt like an incredibly lonely moment, is extreme. Bad laws, those that interfere with personal freedom and self-control, can easily turn good neighbours into monsters. If I was this poor young woman, I’d find it difficult to trust anyone again.

But it wasn’t just this breakdown in empathy that upset me. What made me angry was the implication that breaking the law on abortion wasn’t the full extent of this woman’s "crime": her crime was being poor in the wrong country.

The 1967 Abortion Act was never extended to Northern Ireland, and access to termination is only permitted if a woman's life, or her mental or physical health, is at risk. But if you’ve got the means, this is less of a problem. It’s widely known that Irish women regularly cross the sea to England to have terminations. That situation is bad enough. I’ve heard from women who have made that crossing. The stigma of travelling to another country, often alone, under cover of darkness, to have a procedure that most of your political leaders have branded shameful and, indeed, illegal, is brutal and life-changing.

However, if you’re poor – and can't afford the journey – you face a traumatic choice that will define the rest of your life. You must choose between committing a criminal act that you must hide from prying eyes around you, or giving birth by force.

In Northern Ireland, devolved control over abortion has been a disaster. For all its flaws, the 1967 Act ends the hypocrisy that surrounds the issue. Wealthier women are much more likely to be mobile than poor women so there’s a better chance that they’ll be able to travel for treatment. Not that this ends the stigma, of course. But the Act ends this injustice by extending those rights to poorer women, who otherwise would have nowhere to go but to the modern version of the back alley.

Now, like Northern Ireland, Scotland has devolved control over the issue. And militant pro-lifers, backed by wealthy and well-connected sectors of the country, have been lobbying for many years to push back abortion rights. Some of these people, including the SNP’s John Mason MSP, have gained parliamentary influence.

Scotland, often renowned for machismo and social conservatism, has made some great strides forward since devolution. It wasn’t so long ago that male homosexuality was illegal here; now, we’ve got some of the best gay rights policies in Europe.

However, we must be alert to the return of bigotry and conservatism. Scotland’s centre-left consensus on abortion is basically to keep the 1967 Act in place. The reasoning for this is pretty simple: looking at Ireland and America, people think that any debate on abortion is best avoided.

That’s understandable, but unfortunately it leads us to ignore the Act’s very serious imperfections. While our system is better than many others, it still restricts our freedom too much.

To get an abortion, we still need two doctors to “sign off” on the procedure, certifying that continuing the pregnancy would worsen their physical or mental health worse than termination. Often, this is a formality. But it lengthens the process, wastes NHS time, and causes unnecessary fear and anxiety for women.

These rules give doctors ownership and control of our bodies, and seizing abortion from women’s hands has damaging outcomes. Around one in 10 doctors oppose abortion, and although those individuals must refer women immediately to another practitioner, some use the opportunity to delay or obstruct the decision.

Often, we can fear pointing to these problems, for fear of inflaming American-style hate mobs. Despite all the talk of “fashionable feminism”, the internet has actually made it more difficult to stand up for women without threats of physical and sexual violence. Online misogynist vigilantes can be just as scary as crowds with placards standing outside a clinic.

Fearing the almost inevitable backlash, many conciliate with the pro-life sentiment. In a 2008 speech defending the right to abortion, Diane Abbott, was moved to say that “every abortion is a tragedy”. I understand the temptation to build bridges. But I don’t think we should start from this premise.

There’s a danger that we don’t challenge the culture that breeds anti-abortion sentiment in the first place, a culture where men – and social institutions more broadly – exert control and influence over women’s bodies. By asking for an abortion, you still open yourself up to character judgement from doctors, the legal profession, your family and even friends and neighbours. Abortion is tragic when society allows it to be a lonely, criminal or degrading process, NI-style.

I understand Abbott’s attempt to build bridges. But I don’t think we should start from this premise. There’s a danger that we don’t challenge the culture that breeds anti-abortion sentiment in the first place, a culture where men – and social institutions more broadly – exert control and influence over women’s bodies. By asking for an abortion, you still open yourself up to character judgement from doctors, the legal profession, your family and even friends and neighbours.

Abortions are going to happen. The question is, are we going to surround the issue in sexual and class hypocrisy? Are we going to use the issue to pry into women’s lives and how they control their bodies, to give states consent to peer and prod and judge their sex lives?

Or will we put women and our right to choose first, over all else? The pro-life groups will no doubt call me tasteless, but next year, despite its weaknesses, I’m going to celebrate the Abortion Act’s anniversary. I’ll celebrate it because that poor woman in Belfast deserves so much better from her friends and from her government. But I’m also going to fight for our own review of the issue in Scotland, and demand better access to abortion. Because, if we want a more equal society, then fundamentally women have full and basic control over our own bodies.