Jailing a mother of three - WTF

The legislation in question is the Abortion Act 1967.

Basically, abortion is illegal. A doctor can perform an abortion if two doctors agree that a woman needs one. The grounds that the doctors are allowed to use to say that you need an abortion are much more restricted after 24 weeks, which means in practice 22 weeks because of dating inaccuracies and time between referral and procedure.

The woman in question lied about how far along she was to trick the doctors into posting abortion medication to her when she was more than 24 weeks along, so too late to get any kind of abortion unless two doctors agreed that her life or health was at genuine risk. So the woman is treated in law as someone who has self-aborted, which is illegal.

I honestly cannot believe some of the comments from people who believe that anyone should be able to abort a baby at any gestation for any reason! Are you honestly saying that it should be permissible to abort (kill) a baby at 38 weeks because the mother has changed her mind???

I despair at the state of humanity.

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I don't think the mental health criteria applies after 24 weeks?

As I understand the reporting she didn't want her husband to know she was pregnant by someone else and tried to cover up the pregnancy. She had months to seek professional, confidential support and she knew she pregnant a long time before, as her internet searches show. Just because someone "has their reasons" doesn't make it legal.

I agree

Exactly, I'm 46 with kids I love very much but if I was to find out I was pregnant again like 20 years after last being pregnant, no I've done all that! Don't think I'd cope going through it all again and startling over on the newborn days again.

God, that's awful 😥
It shouldn't be a criminal offence to have an abortion.
You don't know the circumstances behind each decision.
She seems to be struggling here, what is putting her in prison going to achieve?
Women should have bodily autonomy

I’m not in the UK. As I understand it, you can have a pregnancy terminated later than this woman terminated hers as long as you do it the ‘right’ ‘legally sanctioned’ way and meet certain criteria. For various reasons including the womens mental health being at risk. Am I wrong? I’m not in the UK and not sure of the laws on this.

But if it is possible to have a very late term abortion legally I’d she just being sent to prison for not doing it in the ‘legal’ way. Is this about just telling lies on a form?

She is 45 years old with 3 children already and perhaps couldn't face another pregnancy. Most women would understand possible desperation. Current law affords more empathy and consideration to a rapist who attacked a 13 year old child.
I hope there will be a successful appeal.

It is absolutely appalling and I completely agree with Stella Creasey's comments.

Me too.

If unlike Dcousin, that woman were to say "I don't want to spend 12 weeks confined to a foreign hospital and then give birth in a foreign country, I want an abortion so that I can go home", should she be forced to stay pregnant?

She could have pets, elderly parents, other DCs (one of my other cousins was Hagued and for years couldn't take her kids abroad with her, she had to get live-in child care to come over for her own DF's funeral), a job that she'd be deemed to have abandoned if she stays away for twelve weeks...

I don't know. There are women who kill their infants, or neglect them because they don't give a shit. One of the most horrific cases I ever read about involved an infant that starved sitting in a car-seat while the mother played video games.

The fact that someone is screwed up does not mean they aren't culpable for bad things they do, or killing, be it in some kind of accident or negligence or whatever. That's how all crimes are treated.

Crimes where desperate mothers do things like throw newborn babies in trash bins often do have fairly light sentences, because the problems involved are acknowledged. In this case I think its a more severe sentence because it does not look like that at all, it looks like this was a person who was pretty selfish failing to act responsibly over a long period of time.

I say again: "The argument is then about whether she has the right to decide how and when the baby leaves her body at that stage in the pregnancy."

And if some people are saying that women can make that choice, "for any reason", then that includes just wanting to end the life of the unborn and not have them in the world.

The alternative is policing what women do with their own bodies in late-stage pregnancy and risking criminalising doctors for late-stage pregnancy terminations. I'm not comfortable with making a woman stay pregnant if she doesn't want to be, nor am I comfortable making a doctor have to worry about being arrested and charged because his/her patient wasn't quite sick enough to justify an abortion in the eyes of the law.

In the AIBU thread, I suggested that a woman in later pregnancy could be effectively imprisoned in a hospital in a foreign country because broken waters and preeclampsia would require blood pressure monitoring every two hours and render her unfit to fly home. That example isn't hypothetical, I'm describing what happened to one of my cousins.

If, unlike Dcousin, that woman were to say "I don't want to spend 12 weeks confined to a foreign hospital and then give birth in a foreign country, I want an abortion so that I can go home", should she be forced to stay pregnant?

There is obviously some sort of difference in location and using the mother's body.

But it's unquestionably a human life, (late stage of pregnancy), unless you take the radical step of saying that a newborn baby isn't.

And if some people are saying that women can make that choice, "for any reason", then that includes just wanting to end the life of the unborn and not have them in the world.

So it's not that it's more difficult to give the baby over to someone else's care, it's that they just don't want it to be cared for at all.

Sure it ain't. https://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/south/07/07/india.infanticide.pt1/index.html

Yes it could well be relevant in considering why she took the course of action she did.

I'm saying that I don't think it should be considered somehow worse if she was pregnant by a man other than her partner. In that sense, it's absolutely not relevant. Someone upthread said effectively that she deserves to suffer because she was having an affair! Thankfully a woman's sex life doesn't factor into sentencing her for crimes. Because its not bloody relevant!

How do we not send women to jail, other than through decriminalising abortion?

I didn't get to say this on the AIBU thread because it filled up so fast but...

I don't think that abortion is a particularly moral thing to do, especially after the point at which the baby feels pain. Hence why I say "as early as possible".

This doesn't stop me from recognising that a woman can only be a full person within society if she has full bodily autonomy, which necessitates supporting free legal abortion until birth, hence "as late as necessary, on demand, and free of charge". If there's any point at which the law prohibits her from ending the pregnancy, then she's transformed in law from a person into a walking incubator whose interests are secondary to that of the baby.

The reluctance that many on this thread and the AIBU thread show to jailing the woman mentioned in the OP indicates that some of you reject the logical consequence of criminalising late-term abortions, which is jailing women. The logical stance, if you don't want women jailed, is to support decriminalisation. You can advocate for decriminalisation without endorsing late abortion as a morally desirable act. As I said, "as early as possible".

That poor poor woman- she obviously suffers from a mental illness. To knowingly do that?! I hope she gets appropriate mental health help in jail.
RIP the wee baba

She may have not killed a baby but aborted a foetus but it's still illegal over 24 weeks, which is about 4 weeks too late IMO.

It would have been awful to go through giving birth at that late a gestation regardless of what ended the foetuses life and surely as a mother she would have known she'd have to give birth. I can't decide whether she was deranged and in a really bad place due to other factors in her life or a cold calculating abortionist (??)

Either way having children should make you less likely to commit a crime so as your children aren't deprived of a mother, it shouldn't be a reason for not being punished for a crime.

This is definitely not a common occurrence like you’ve stated it is.

Thought experiment: abortion is decriminalised at all stages of pregnancy and the medical regulators have decided what abortion care should consist of at each stage in pregnancy. A mother of three is 32 weeks pregnant and has recently changed partners from man B back to man A. A is the father of her three children. B is the father of her pregnancy. The mother has moved in with A immediately after leaving B, during a pandemic lockdown. The mother telephones an abortion hotline to request an abortion.

What do you think she would be asked during that phone call? What do you think would happen at the clinic? What do you think that gold standard care should look like for that woman? And do you think that she would lie about her conception date if abortion were decriminalised?

Dancingcandlesticks · Today 23:54
I agree with abortion at this stage being illegal, but I think this woman needs therapy not a prison sentence. No one in their right mind, thinking clearly, would choose to abort at home at that stage. She must have either not had full understanding of how horrific that would be or be so desperate. Neither of those are helped by being imprisoned.”

I can’t imagine being 44, with three children already, having sexual relations with three men (reportedly) and not knowing how to prevent a pregnancy.

Perhaps while she is in prison she will get the help she clearly needs.

I think this is a minority view but that doesn’t mean women should go to jail.

Actually it could be relevant that she was ‘shagging around’ because she may have felt very unsafe at home knowing the baby was from her affair partner, for example.
And/or she could have delayed having the abortion because she was trying to make it work to be with the affair partner, for him to raise the baby with her.

We don't improve the status of women and girls within society by forcing women to gestate, whether they are gestating daughters or not.