In a concerning case, a woman has been sentenced to 28 months in prison after pleading guilty to taking abortion pills after the legal limit.
The mother of three, 44, received the pills under the government’s ‘pills by post’ initiative which began during the pandemic as a way to allow women to have at-home abortions without the need to attend in-person appointments.
In March 2022, MPs voted to continue the telemedical scheme, which was available to anyone seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy of up to 10 weeks.
The court heard that the woman terminated her pregnancy past the 10 week point, and was not aware of how advanced the pregnancy was as she had not been able to attend a scan.
She pleaded guilty to administering drugs to procure abortion and was prosecuted under a law from 1861 – the Offences Against the Person Act, which carries a maximum life sentence. Previously in the case, the woman had pleaded not guilty to a charge of an offence of child destruction.
The woman will serve half of her 28-month sentence in custody and the remaining under license. Mandu Reid, the leader of the Women’s Equality party, said that she is ‘devastated’ for the woman and her children who have been ‘forcibly separated from their mum’.
Reid said: ‘She’s been sentenced to over two years in prison, missing their birthdays and all the precious everyday moments of their lives. This conviction serves no one, not her, not her children, not the public interest.
‘All it does is punish a woman for seeking healthcare in the middle of a pandemic and risk deterring women who want or need an abortion from seeking that care in future.’
Clare Murphy, Chief Executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) said they were ‘shocked and appalled’ by the sentencing.
‘No woman can ever go through this again. In their sentencing remarks, the judge made it [clear] that women will only be protected from prosecution if MPs bring forward legal change. The has never been a clearer mandate for parliamentary action, and the need has never been so urgent.’
The Stoke-on-Trent crown court heard that the woman discovered she was pregnant in December 2019 and in May 2020, she arranged a telephone consultation with BPAS. After taking the pills in May, she passed the pregnancy at home and was later admitted to hospital after she called emergency services.
Doctors later concluded that the foetus was between 32 and 34 weeks gestation at the time of delivery. There was no sign the foetus took an independent breath, according to the coroner’s report.
The defence said that the woman requires assistance from mental health services and needs ‘family and support’ rather than a custodial sentence.
Justice Pepperall said: ‘This case concerns one woman’s tragic and unlawful decision to obtain a late-term abortion. In my judgment your culpability was high … because you knew full well your pregnancy was beyond the limit of 24 weeks, and you deliberately lied to gain access to telemedical services.’
The judge said he accepts that the woman feels ‘very deep and genuine remorse’ for her actions.
‘You are wracked by guilt and have suffered depression,’ he added. ‘I also accept that you had a very deep emotional attachment to your unborn child and that you are plagued by nightmares and flashbacks to seeing your dead child’s face.’
The court also heard that the woman had made Google searches such as ‘I need to have an abortion but I’m past 24 weeks’ and ‘Could I go to jail for aborting my baby at 30 weeks.’
In April 2023, a mitigation plea was sent to the judge and was signed by groups including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives.
The letter, which urged a non-custodial sentence, pleaded for the judge to ‘consider leniency in this case’.
It read: ‘We are fearful that if the case before you receives a custodial sentence it may signal to other women who access telemedical abortion services, or who experience later gestation deliveries, that they risk imprisonment if they seek medical care.’
Vulnerable women in the most incredibly difficult of circumstances ‘deserve more from our legal system’, Murphy stated. ‘In 2020, MPs in Westminster amended the law in Northern Ireland to remove the threat of criminal sanction for any woman who attempted to end their own pregnancy.
‘MPs must extend the same protection so that no more women in these desperate circumstances in the UK are ever threatened with prison again.’
In response to the distressing news, BPAS announced that this Saturday they will be taking to the streets of London alongside organisations such as the Women’s Equality Party and Fawcett Society, to ‘demand legislative reform’.
