Campaigners and MPs have reacted with outrage to a woman being sentenced to more than two years in prison for procuring drugs to induce an abortion after the legal limit.
The mother of three received the medication under the “pills by post” scheme, which was introduced during the Covid pandemic for unwanted pregnancies up to 10 weeks, after a remote consultation.
Prosecutors said the woman had knowingly misled the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) by saying she was below the 10-week cut-off, when she believed she was about 28 weeks pregnant.
Doctors later concluded the foetus was from 32 to 34 weeks’ gestation (between seven and eight months) at the time of termination. In England, Scotland and Wales, abortion is generally legal up to 24 weeks but is carried out in a hospital or clinic after 10 weeks.
The woman, 44, pleaded guilty in March under the Offences against the Person Act, legislation that dates back to 1861, and will serve half of her 28-month sentence in custody and the remaining under licence. Originally, she had pleaded not guilty to a charge of an offence of child destruction.
The judge in the case said the woman felt “very deep and genuine remorse” and was racked with guilt and plagued by nightmares over her actions.
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.
“I accept that you feel very deep and genuine remorse for your actions. You are racked by guilt and have suffered depression. 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.”
He added that if the woman had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity at magistrates court, the custodial sentence could have been suspended.
The number of women and girls facing police investigations and the threat of life imprisonment under current abortion laws has risen over the past three years, according to BPAS. In 2022, a woman who used abortion medication in a failed attempt to end her own pregnancy was reported to the police by her medical team.
Stoke-on-Trent crown court heard how the woman discovered she was pregnant in December 2019 before arranging a telephone consultation with BPAS in May 2020.
She took the medication at home, and was later admitted to hospital after calling emergency services. Police were called to her bedside by hospital staff. The prosecution said the woman told police in an interview that she had lied to BPAS about how far along her pregnancy was to obtain the pills.
The court also heard that the woman had made Google searches, including: “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.”
There was no sign the foetus took an independent breath, according to the coroner’s report.
The judge said there were no sentencing guidelines for the offence, but that the maximum sentence was life imprisonment.
The defence, Barry White, said the woman needed “family and support” rather than a jail term.
A mitigation plea was sent to the judge in April 2023 signed by groups including the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives. “We plead to Your Honour to consider leniency in this case … we are fearful that if the case before you receives a custodial sentence it may signal to other women who access tele-medical abortion services, or who experience later gestation deliveries, that they risk imprisonment if they seek medical care,” it said.
The judge said the letter was “inappropriate”, adding that he “does not accept that imprisonment in this case is likely to deter women and girls from lawfully seeking abortion care within the 24-week limit”.
After the sentencing, Clare Murphy, the chief executive of BPAS, said she was “shocked and appalled” by the custodial sentence, adding: “In their sentencing remarks, the judge made it clear that women will only be protected from prosecution if MPs bring forward legal change. There has never been a clearer mandate for parliamentary action, and the need has never been so urgent.
“Over the last three years, there has been an increase in the numbers of women and girls facing the trauma of lengthy police investigations and threatened with up to life imprisonment under our archaic abortion law.”
Mandu Reid, the leader of the Women’s Equality party, said: “I am devastated for the woman at the centre of this case, and for her children, who have been forcibly separated from their mum …
“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. No one deserves to be criminalised for seeking healthcare, which is a human right.”
The Labour MP Stella Creasy said: “It is an hangover from another era that our abortion laws are based not on healthcare considerations, but first and foremost criminal sanctions.
“This case shows that the failure to address this has very real modern-day implications. In the light of repeated attacks on women’s rights and the lack of compassion this case shows, it’s never been more urgent to ensure it is a formal human right of all women in the UK to access a safe, legal and local abortion if she chooses.”
In his sentencing remarks the judge made reference to Sarah Catt who in 2012 was originally sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment after aborting her unborn baby within a week of a due date, although her sentence was reduced to three and a half years on appeal.
