Peers also rejected a bid to make it mandatory for a pregnant woman to have an in-person consultation before lawfully being prescribed medicine for the termination of a pregnancy at home.
Tory peer Baroness Stroud said her amendment to require an in-person appointment “would ensure medical professionals can accurately assess a woman’s gestational age, any health risks and the risk of coercion before abortion pills are prescribed”.
Under the current law it is legal to take prescribed medication at home if a woman is less than 10 weeks pregnant.
The Government changed the regulations during the first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, to allow women to have medical abortions at home following a phone or video consultation.
This change was made permanent in 2022, so women can take pills at home for gestation of up to nine weeks and six days.
House of Lords rejected the bid to move back to compulsory in-person consultations by 191 votes to 119.
Pro choice and pro life campaigners brought banners and placards to the House of Lords as peers arrived for the debate.
Speaking to the BBC, pro life campaigner Sarah said: “We need to protect the unborn child in the womb and we also need to protect women from abortion because abortion harms women as well as their children.
“I believe that every child, from the moment of conception, is valuable in the eyes of God and I don’t believe that there are any situations that really allow abortion, because we’re not the ones that give life and we’re not the ones that should take it away either.
“I’ve struggled to conceive – I’ve been married 15 years – so it’s very difficult to see so many lives lost by abortion when I would have gladly taken any one of them into my family.”
Pro choice campaigner Louise McCudden told the BBC she believed it was “unacceptable” for women in England and Wales to still be subject to a Victorian law created before women had the right to vote.
McCudden, who works for abortion provider MSI Reproductive Choices UK, said: “We know from providing reproductive healthcare across six continents that criminalisation harms women and makes abortion less safe.
“The House of Lords now has a historic opportunity to end the threat of prosecution once and for all, pardon women who have been previously convicted, and drop ongoing investigations.
“At a time when we are seeing rollbacks in reproductive rights around the world, most notably in the US, it’s encouraging that our parliament is standing up for women.”