‘I was right to be frightened’: Nicola Packer on the humiliation and trauma of her trial for illegal abortion

Nicola Packer was taken from her hospital ward to a police cell still in pain and was told her anti-clotting medication ‘was not a priority’. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

“I hate sitting in silence now,” Nikki Packer says. A quiet room reminds her too much of the police cell she was locked into just hours after undergoing a traumatic stillbirth.

Arrested in hospital by uniformed officers while still recovering from surgery, she was accused of carrying out an illegal abortion. It took four-and-a-half years for her case to come to court, where last week she was unanimously cleared by a jury.