Woman arrested after stillbirth due to suspicions she had ‘illegal abortion’ (in the UK)

Covidagainandagain · Today 13:17

Thank you for sharing this from your own experience. It must be very difficult.

That is another sad story about the 15 year old. Of course that girl might have been like you.

And if her baby hadn’t died because of a condition like yours, or another not yet medically understood factor which is the case in a proportion of still births, if it was indeed a back street abortion, goodness knows what she had been through to find herself in that predicament. She was apart from anything else a child. I hope it would never have been her they punished.

Sometimes it seems worth all women giving up their telephone and laptops so the police can stop seizing them. Whatever did the police do before they were invented?

I have a condition called unicornuate uterus. It is often undiagnosed until a woman ends up having an emergence c-section, or (as in my case) problems conceiving.

The following outcomes are likely:
Prematurity – 44%
Ectopic pregnancy – 4%
First-trimester abortion – 24.3%
Second-trimester abortion – 9.7%
Intrauterine fetal demise – 10.5%

In fact I am only 29.2% likely to actually have a live birth if I managed to get pregnant.

If I had managed to get pregnant, and I didn't know about my condition I could be this woman.

In a case from 2021:
In the case of the 15-year-old, police were called by hospital staff who believed the teenager had taken a substance bought on the internet to end her pregnancy. They were aware that she had previously contacted an abortion provider to obtain information about a possible termination, and that it could not go ahead because it was just after the 24-week legal limit.
The teenager’s phone and laptop were seized and examined for evidence of supposed wrongdoing, including text messages she had exchanged with her boyfriend expressing worry about the pregnancy. The case was dropped after postmortem tests found the baby had probably been stillborn because of natural causes, according to a report seen by the Observer.

I could have been this girl, or any of the other 67 women investigated over the last 10 years.

Apparently the possible punishment is up to 14 years in prison. If any of these women have been raped their rapists would spend less time in prison.

This needs to be decriminalized.

OMG this is awful. WTAF? Never underestimate misogyny.

WhatNoRaisins · Today 07:32
I think ultimately women need to know it's always going to be safe for them to present at a hospital with pregnancy complications.

Yes, what a warning this is.

There are 1 in 200 still births/ late pregnancy miscarriages and not all even have a known explanation.

I think ultimately women need to know it's always going to be safe for them to present at a hospital with pregnancy complications.

The law absolutely should criminalise people performing illegal abortions. It shouldn't criminalise women who access an illegal abortion.

(not saying that was the case here, but it would also stop this situation happening again)

They did not suspect that she had murdered a baby. They suspected (suspect) that she had a termination. Not the same thing.

Also - if a woman did find herself in a situation where she thought she needed to kill her newborn I would argue very strongly that serious mental health support, not criminalisation, would be what was needed in that situation.

Abortion not infanticide
Abortion not murder
And if they can't work out that someone who may have had an illegal abortion is not a danger to the public unless the public intends on crawling up her uterus then they need to apply a little more critical thinking

There was no infanticide ffs. There was a foetus inside a woman. It’s disturbing that she WAS taken into police custody.

FFS She was hardly going to re offend, at least not for another 6 months. This women was no threat to anyone and had just had her baby die.

Of course this is a terrible mistake to make, but if they had legitimate reasons to suspect someone of infanticide, wouldn't it be more disturbing if they had not immediately discharge them into police custody? If they genuinely suspected a child had been murdered, the suspect would be classed as an immediate danger to the public.

Thanks Andouillete x

@GingerCake2018 it’s just black & white I guess, the law is really clear. I haven’t stated my own personal opinions because they aren’t relevant to this, but the cut off is there for many reasons and one is safety. There is of course a difference in the size of the fetus between those two dates - it’s why a pregnancy can be dated to almost the day.

I don’t pretend that these clinics are fit for purpose, many are not. They have won contracts by being cheap, not good. If I told you that I once saw one that recovered women on deck chairs I am sure you would be shocked.

anyway I guess we are off topic. The woman shouldn’t have been arrested or processed like that, but legitimate clinic providers should if they are breaking the law. I say legitimate clinics because I don’t see the historical actions of the Jane’s in the US as being the same.

But I don't get from that article that there was even necessarily a clinic involved to arrest someone from.

It said that because she had been in touch with an abortion provider they think that means she may have had an illegal abortion, but not that the abortion provider she spoke to provided her with an abortion.

I get that the press dont know everything but it really feels like both the HCPs and the police have jumped to a lot of conclusions about this woman

They held her for 36 hours?

Yes agree with PP. Why the fuck was the woman arrested rather than clinic manager. And what would be the rationale for keeping her locked up for 36 hours. What on earth did the police think she would do? Sickening.

Oh sorry. I should have checked back before speculating!

It says in the article it was staff. It's not assuming it was staff when the article says it was healthcare colleagues.

Because healthcare colleagues were suspicious, and knew she had been in touch with us, an abortion provider, as she told them, they suspected her of having an illegal abortion and called the police. But she wasn’t over the limit for a legal abortion.

We've assumed it's the HCPs that complained.

What if it was the dad of the baby? Maybe this woman was trying to get out of a relationship and her ex is using the police against her in this way?

That actually makes more sense to me than the HCPs having raised concerns.

AgathaMystery · Today 14:25

My concern is with the particular treatment the woman received at the hands of the police.

There is no particular reason either, to have full confidence in the police’s actions here - no reason to assume they behaved reasonably and wisely - given what we are seeing about the police recently.

I do agree that clinics must be good, and if an abortion had been wrongfully conducted by an illegally operating clinic, the police should go after the clinic.

This report though, if it is true, is about the woman being arrested in the hospital, not about a clinic manager being arrested.

Clinically what would be different at 24+3 than at 23+6, that the procedure needed to be in a different facility?

You seem to be giving multiple reasons for your decision to report the clinic.

I understand your wider concerns about the clinic being shut down if it was found out that an abortion past the time limit took place there, but why keep adding other irrelevant details like it somehow becoming a dangerous procedure in the space of 4 days.

No I wouldn't - it would have been a legal procedure & the facilities are adequate for 23+6 (not good, merely adequate - but that's what happens when the NHS looses contracts to provide certain aspects of care).

I'm committed to safe abortions for women & part of that is making sure procedures are legal. I participate in feticides, abortions, IOL where we know the fetus will not survive, you name it, i'm not squeamish and i'm not judgmental. I've pretty much seen it all.

We cannot have clinics that provide 100's of procedures a yr closed down - women need the clinics so the clinics must practice within the law. When we have illegal abortions the clinic is closed and no one can have an abortion, so all abortions must be legal so we can keep facilities open.

Spoiler: this clinic was closed by CQC after a woman had a PPH & the clinic called 999 & put her in an ambulance but their anaesthetist declined to get on board to continue life saving care. the clinic later reopened under the banner of the other major UK providers name.

I am confident that I am in the right job.

Yeah, I really think without more information it's not sensible to say whether they were justified or not.

An individual being a threat is not at all the only reason that person might be arrested. And the fact that they took her right from the hospital suggests there was some concern about her leaving and heading home, for some reason - they will have had to have been looking out specifically for when she was being discharged

I hadn't thought of sex trafficking but that could be a possibility for sure and women in that situation sometimes are uncooperative. The police aren't supposed to just ignore it though.

Presumably you were reporting dangerous clinical practice, and would have done the same if they had tried a similarly dangerous procedure at the clinic at 23+6, rather than being concerned about the legal semantics of an arbitrary cut off for legal abortion at 24 weeks gestation.

If it was about the cut off date, then you are clearly in the wrong job.

And I'm shocked this can happen in the UK, and think we need to change the law.