Criminal or a Health Matter?

The point is this woman was eight months pregnant when she aborted her child.
Eight months. She deliberately lied to obtain the pill necessary to abort., by saying she was seven weeks pregnant. It was a calculated plan to deceive the clinic.
I am anti abortion anyway but this case is just horrific.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for her.

If a woman is desperate for an abortion then do it in the time frame medically advised and mostly not after 24 weeks.

I speak up for the woman in questions child/baby which was a 34 week term baby. Full term is anything between 37 and 42 weeks, so if the baby was born naturally it had every chance of being healthy and surviving.
I only am going by what I have heard and considering she had already given birth to three other children she would have been fully aware of her on going pregnancy.
The baby would have been moving around and kicking for months and almost coming to the point of delivery. I have no sympathy for the woman who administered herself with pills from the internet and subsequently killed the baby in her stomach. The baby would have felt pain and distress before it's death and to me those are horrific actions she took. All she had to do was have the baby at full term and then hand it over for adoption as there are thousands of people out there who are looking to adopt. I see this woman as having other options than the one she took.
I disagree that maybe she had no-one to talk to or she did not want to upset the partner she had recently returned to and he would have known about a 34 week pregnancy so if he went along with things then he is just as much to blame as her.

Is this what you're referring to Germansheperdsmum?

Section 58 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861, entitled 'administering drugs or using instruments to procure abortion.

Every woman, being with child, who, with intent to procure her own miscarriage, shall unlawfully administer to herself any poison or other noxious thing, or shall unlawfully use any instrument or other means whatsoever with the like intent, and whosoever, with intent to procure the miscarriage of any woman, whether she be or be not with child, shall unlawfully administer to her or cause to be taken by her any poison or other noxious thing, or shall unlawfully use any instrument or other means whatsoever with the like intent, shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable to be kept in penal servitude for life'

We will have to agree to differ Wyllow. What we know from that very short article is minuscule in the scheme of things. .

Actually the 1861 Act does cover GBH. I suggest you read it in its current, amended form. It isn’t archaic, it’s much used today. And of course she didn’t cause GBH, she caused death. The charge against her could have been murder, which carries a mandatory life sentence. Still criticising the CPS?

^It isn't really a subject you would bring up in a phone call is it?

Well, yes it would be if you were desperately needing advice wouldn't it? But Covid lockdown #1 began in March 2020 and in February 2020, she was already searching Google for "How to lose a baby at six months. In April 2020, she searched for 'I need to have an abortion but I'm past 24 weeks'. She spoke to a nurse practitioner at BPAS on May 6, 2020, leading the nurse to believe that she was around seven weeks pregnant. Her child, a girl, was born, not breathing, on May 11, 2020." Therefore, her pregnancy began well before any pandemic lockdowns or restrictions in seeking out healthcare advice.

As for "no one to talk to", She had moved back in with her estranged partner when lockdown began.

It would appear that there were options available to her but she chose an illegally late abortion.

Imo we do have enough information re a judgement as to whether a prison sentence is the best option.

Or whether the CPA should have chosen that law as opposed to GBH. an old law was dredged up which gave no choice.

Glorianny

Germanshepherdsmum

Glorianny

Have people forgotten the lock down? No one to talk to. Three kids at home because school was closed. Just getting through each day would be a struggle without the problem of an unwanted pregnancy.

I don’t agree that it would have been impossible for her to see a doctor in the circumstances. Not easy but not impossible. How do you know she had no one to talk to?

I didn't say it would be impossible, but most people with three children to care for were just getting through each day, without the additional problem of trying to find healthcare. As for no one to talk to weren't most people in that position?, with face to face contact limited and meetings restricted. It isn't really a subject you would bring up in a phone call is it?

It’s impossible to say that ‘most people’ had nobody to talk to. We have no idea of what family and friendships she had. If you were desperate enough, yes you would bring it up in a phone call. We were not complete prisoners in our homes with no access to anyone else. I wish people would stop inventing excuses for this woman when they have no idea of her personal circumstances apart from her having three children, an estranged husband and other men in her life, by one of whom she is said to have become pregnant. Siblings? Parents? Friends? No idea.

I saw the judge’s remarks reported in the article Wyllow but that is far from enough to form any understanding of the case.

The judge made remarks in the article in the O/P, GSM,
M which shows there had been evaluations as he alludes to depression, a great deal of remorse, and other states of mind and current situation.
Of course the defence and prosecution team would have had psycholigical assessments in a case like this.

Agree, Westendgirl

Germanshepherdsmum

Glorianny

Have people forgotten the lock down? No one to talk to. Three kids at home because school was closed. Just getting through each day would be a struggle without the problem of an unwanted pregnancy.

I don’t agree that it would have been impossible for her to see a doctor in the circumstances. Not easy but not impossible. How do you know she had no one to talk to?

I didn't say it would be impossible, but most people with three children to care for were just getting through each day, without the additional problem of trying to find healthcare. As for no one to talk to weren't most people in that position?, with face to face contact limited and meetings restricted. It isn't really a subject you would bring up in a phone call is it?

It’s particularly heartbreaking for the poor little baby. Killed at about the same age my grandchild was when she was born.

Killing a baby at 32 weeks is totally wrong. She has denied that child the right to life. Abortion if it has to be done should only be carried out in the early stages of pregnancy.
A custodial sentence would just cause suffering for the children she has so I am not in favour of that but hard to know if she is freed would it set a precedent for others to do this?

Glorianny , thank goodness for your common sense and sympathetic posts.
It is too easy to sit there condemning without knowing the whole story. It's a heartbreaking case . Perhaps more empathy is needed.

Glorianny

Have people forgotten the lock down? No one to talk to. Three kids at home because school was closed. Just getting through each day would be a struggle without the problem of an unwanted pregnancy.

I don’t agree that it would have been impossible for her to see a doctor in the circumstances. Not easy but not impossible. How do you know she had no one to talk to?

Wyllow3

"One has to question whether a woman who had the capacity to deliberately destroy her near-term baby can safely be allowed to care for her other children. There is no answer to that question available to any of us."

Not so - there were psychological assessments made.

Are you privy to the outcome of those assessments Wyllow?

As I said, none of us knows. People with full knowledge of all the evidence do.

For me a question is whether it should be classified as an abortion when the woman is 32 weeks pregnant. Nearly all babies born at 32 weeks survive, so it is a baby, not a foetus. I don’t think we can dress up the fact that she killed her baby knowing that.

However, knowing that does not mean that a custodial sentence is the right solution for her. The trauma of giving birth to a baby that you know you have killed is punishment enough for any mother. I think the fact that everybody she knows is aware of what she did is going to make her life very difficult in the future too, and I hope her children can be protected, although it’s difficult to see how that’s possible.

Have people forgotten the lock down? No one to talk to. Three kids at home because school was closed. Just getting through each day would be a struggle without the problem of an unwanted pregnancy.

in addition, I find that a very worrying remark.

Thinking back over a very long history of agonising decisions made by women to abort because they could not care for yet one more child in a whole range of circumstances, or women who have not had the ability to look after a first child for a whole number of reasons, many under duress.

I think the choice of charges made by the CPA is of concern for anyone wishing to keep a womens rights over her own body.

This is not condoning this lady's choice however, given the time frame.

ilovecheese no one, that I can see, is judging any woman for having sex with 3 different men. However, when you become pregnant by one of those men, who you strongly suspect is not your estranged husband, and whom you know will object to having a child that isn't his, you run the risk of making disastrous decisions. As this woman did. She'd already had 3 pregnancies and so must have been fully aware of the symptoms quite early on. Why leave it until the baby is almost full term before you do something about it if she knew she didn't want to proceed? It isn't the number of sexual partners I have a problem with. It's her decision not to address the resulting pregnancy until she was well beyond legal and ethical termination that I cannot accept. And she even lied about that.

"One has to question whether a woman who had the capacity to deliberately destroy her near-term baby can safely be allowed to care for her other children. There is no answer to that question available to any of us."

Not so - there were psychological assessments made.

I don’t understand why a custodial sentence was imposed. The prisons are full, this woman poses no threat to society. This terrible act will have led to assessments on her ability to provide safe care to her older children.
I need to read more about the evidence, it’s clear she committed a serious offence but I can’t see a custodial sentence as appropriate.

Abortion should not be a criminal act. There is no reason at all for it to be so and certainly no reason for it to have a custodial sentence attached to it.
Possible reasons for criminality and a prison sentence.
Prevention-criminality has never prevented women from having abortions
Protection-No one needs protection from women who have had abortions, on the contrary they often need support
Punishment- women who have abortions can and do suffer regrets and may years afterwards still wonder about their decision. No prison sentence could match that.
None of those reasons justifies maintaining abortion as a criminal act with an automatic prison sentence. It should be decriminalised.

Being discussed on womans hour this morning

That baby, had it been delivered would have been viable, have seen too many distressing times when a late term foetus has been aborted, and taken a breath.
The Law is there for good reason.

I may be mistaken but I thought that pregnancy was often used as mitigation simply because hormonal changes alters perception. That poor woman must have been distraught and desperate. Beside the lawbreaking the risk she was taking to abort a child at that time in her pregnancy is beyond thinking about. As for leaving three children without their mother is an abominable decision or as Dickens claimed “the law is an ass”.