A mother jailed for procuring her own miscarriage. Is that what we want in 21st-century Britain?

‘The woman still, the court heard, has nightmares in which she sees her dead child’s face.’ Photograph: Microgen Images/Science Photo Library/Getty Images/Science Photo Library RF

How should society treat a woman who desperately doesn’t want to have a child?

For she was evidently desperate, the 44-year-old mother of three children – one of whom has additional needs – jailed on Monday for the 19th-century crime of procuring her own miscarriage. The court heard that she must have known for months that she was expecting; that having moved back in during lockdown with her estranged ex while pregnant with another man’s child, she’d furtively Googled both how to conceal a pregnancy and how to end one, agonising over the decision for weeks.