Woman who took abortion pill after UK term limit sentenced to 28 months

By Sana Noor Haq, CNN

(CNN) — A British woman who used medication to induce an abortion after the United Kingdom’s legally allowed limit has been sentenced to prison for 28 months, the PA Media news agency reported.

In a case that sparked calls for an overhaul of reproductive justice laws in the country, the mother-of-three, 44, was handed the sentence by a judge in Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court in central England on Monday. She was sentenced under the Offences Against the Person Act, which dates back to 1861.

She had pleaded guilty to dispensing drugs or using instruments to obtain an abortion. The maximum sentence in the country is life imprisonment.

The woman will serve 14 months in custody and the remainder on license after her release. She was first charged with child destruction and pleaded not guilty.

She had searched a number of abortion-related items online in the months between February and May 2020, after she became pregnant in 2019, the prosecution said.

She had a conversation with a nurse at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), an abortion care facility, on May 6, 2020, PA Media reported. BPAS mailed her abortion-inducing medication after concluding she was about seven weeks pregnant, based on her answers.

Five days later, after the woman ingested the drugs, an emergency call was made saying she was in labor. Her child was born during the phone call, and was later pronounced dead at hospital following resuscitation attempts by paramedics.

The woman was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant at the time, a post-mortem examination revealed. The baby’s cause of death was documented as still birth and maternal use of abortion drugs, according to PA Media.

Abortion laws in the UK stipulate that a person may be able to have a medical abortion at home if they are less than 10 weeks pregnant, according to the National Health Service.

The lady had not visited a doctor about her pregnancy because she was “embarrassed” and had no knowledge of how far along she was, the court was told.

The prosecuting barrister, Robert Price, said the woman “lied to BPAS about how pregnant she was so they sent the tablets to her,” according to PA Media.

‘Tragic’ case

Justice Pepperall declared the case was “tragic,” adding he might have contemplated suspending the jail sentence if the woman pleaded guilty earlier.

The case triggered calls for an urgent reform of abortion laws in the UK.

“We must ensure the law protects women, like the woman who faces sentencing today, from prosecution. We call on the governemnt [sic] to reform our outdated #abortion laws now & safeguard our constitutional right to abortion,” the Fawcett Society, a UK-based gender equality and women’s rights charity, tweeted.

Commenting on the case, BPAS tweeted: “No woman can ever go through this again. We need abortion law reform in Great Britain NOW.”

When asked if British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is certain that criminalizing abortion in some situations is the correct approach, his spokesperson told reporters: “Our laws as they stand balance a woman’s right to access safe and legal abortions with the rights of an unborn child, I’m not aware of any plans to address that approach.”

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