AIBU to think throwing a mum-of-four in prison for having an abortion is never the answer?

[therescoffeeinthatnebula]

Spotted this on Twitter and haven't seen it already being discussed.

Apparently, a woman is being sentenced today for having an abortion over the limit during lockdown. I don't know of the circumstances (can't find anything other than the Sunday Times article), only that she already had four children and claims she didn't know exactly how far along she was.

I think most of us would agree making medical appointments during lockdown was bloody difficult and that it's even harder to attend any appointment if you have children, given you're not normally allowed to take them with you.

Whatever the truth, I'm appalled to see a woman potentially thrown in prison for trying to seek an abortion during lockdown, especially when you look at how violence against women is treated. I'd have thought referring her for mandatory counselling would be more of an appropriate outcome than prison because finding out you aborted what could have been a viable baby has got to mess with anyone's head.

It's all very sad - she should have been able to access proper services earlier - but prison, to me, should never have been on the table as a consequence.

I didn't actually realise that abortion in this country was blanket illegal and that our rights to seek abortions up to the limit are actually exceptions to that law rather than a piece of legislation that stands on its own.

I think that knowingly inducing an abortion at 32 weeks is awful. There are rules and regulations in place for a reason. But I also think that this is a personal matter for that woman only and she should have been offered support, counselling and at most community service or something rehabilitational.

What frustrates me the most though is that conversations around abortion always goes to rape, suicide, domestic violence… this doesn’t help the case for abortion laws. There are plenty of mentally stable women in steady relationships who choose to abort because they became unexpectedly pregnant. Most abortions are not because of extreme circumstances. If we continue to use extreme circumstances as the basis for why abortion should be legal then we limit the potential impact of it and feed in to the thinking that abortion is an option only in extenuating circumstances.

Perfectly sane, undamaged women have accidents and choose to have abortions because they do not want to be responsible for a child for the rest of their lives at that point in their life. Some people find that sad or uncomfortable but abortion is about empowering the person who finds themselves in that situation and allowing them options.

Rather than complain about abortion, people who do so should instead fight to make child rearing easier for women. Then abortion rates would likely reduce.

The letter was a bad idea. That makes them look involved in an unlawful act.

I've got a Times subscription, so I was going to look up the article and post a share token on this thread.

I can't find it! I searched for all the articles by the author (Hannah Al-Othman). There doesn't appear to be an article from her in the Sunday Times yesterday? If anyone is able to find a link, let me know and I'll create the share token.

I did find a couple of other articles from the author on the same subject, in case anyone is interested:

British women taken to court over abortions

Judge ‘flabbergasted’ at prosecution of woman who took abortion pills

It was a 28 week old fetus.

At the end of the day, lockdown was to blame for this. The NHS withdrew essential services which should have continued to be provided in person. At any other time she would have seen a doctor, been examined and probably scanned, then given appropriate counselling and support. Posting pills to people with no examination was just plain wrong, full stop.

As for her mental health, I can only base it on my own experience of lockdown. Trapped in the house with no support and no childcare, no money because of the circumstances, schools closed and trying to educate at home, terrified of a killer disease, death figures being posted in the news daily, queuing for food and unable to get essentials like toilet paper and beans. I had a proper screaming meltdown in the supermarket because someone didn’t have a mask on and they came too close to me. It’s not surprising if her mental health was shot and she felt she simply couldn’t have another baby right then. Has everyone forgotten what it was like and how scared we were?

What is interesting is that infanticide, the killing of a born child (an established person, unlike a fetus) by the mother within twelve months of birth rarely, if ever, results in a custodial sentence in the UK. If it does, the sentencing guidelines are between 1-14 years.

Contrast that with a woman that ended her own pregnancy, who could face life imprisonment.

Reform seems necessary, and I think this case will prompt it. The letter to the judge signed by MPs and medics is unusual, and imo points to it.

'A 34 week FOETUS. Not a baby.

It's not a person. It was not born, it did not, (in a legal sense) die. It did not experience anything, in any meaningful sense.

A foetus and a baby are not the same thing.'

If it takes a breath it's a baby. Do we know what happened here? Many concealed births show evidence of suffocation.
Parents experiencing stillbirth don't tend to talk about 'the foetus'. Does being unwanted just change our perception of the same thing?

It says she is a mother to three children, one who has additional needs .. she could have been acting in the best interest of her existing children.

@goldierocks I put a link to a photo of the Sunday Times article earlier in this thread (I think on page 1, actually). Does everything from the Sunday Times get published online too?

The real crime is how severely access to abortion services and to maternity services were impacted during lockdown, I really hope the court takes this into account. A woman who has previously given birth doesn't take the decision to take these pills at what they possibly knew was a late stage of pregnancy on a whim or unless they're in turmoil and desperate. I can't comprehend she's now potentially facing life in prison. Dismissing the letter from health professionals doesn't bode well imo.

I work with someone who fell pregnant on the coil and didn't feel comfortable ordering abortion pills online so was essentially forced into continuing the pregnancy because there wasn't a viable termination option during this period. Fucking outrageous.

The judge is summing up and passing sentence now.

Even if she was aware of how far along she was, any woman who feels the need to access an abortion at such a late stage is a woman in crisis who needs help, not prosecution.

I would treat this the same as a woman who abandons her baby. No woman shouldn't be vilified for feeling the need to do something that desperate for reasons unknown to us, she needs mental health support.

Where's the father in all of this? Oh!

She’s sentenced to 28 months in prison.

If the judge puts her in prison, he won't be thinking of her children.

another screenshot.

Judge says that the woman’s “level of culpability is high.”

Says “you knew full well that your pregnancy was beyond the legal limit” and that she “deliberately lied” to procure the drugs.

Woman is sentenced to 28 months in prison. Judge says sentence after trial would have been 3 years.

He says “one of the tragedies” of the case is she did not indicate her guilty plea at the earliest opportunity —sentence would have been eligible to be suspended with full credit.

I think the fact that one of her children has SEN is very pertinent. As I said earlier, women over 35 have higher-risk pregnancies. As a woman in her 40s, with one child with SEN already, I can see why the thought of another child with SEN was too much for her to cope with.

FFS. 28 months in prison? This is awful. Her poor, poor children.

From the excellent Hannah Al Othmanon Twitter

If there is a petition started to reduce/overturn the sentence and/or to change the law could someone please post a link?

I'm not on Twitter so cannot follow this.

(You don't need to have a Twitter account to follow things on Twitter)

The judge has said: it is up to parliament to change the law, and those who object to the law to lobby parliament, but judges must apply the law as it stands.

The irony you're missing is that medical professionals didn't have the opportunity during lockdown to be able to support and be involved with abortions and caring for women as they should have been because of lockdown. So no, they weren't involved in the care and support this woman so evidently needed (not their fault). Its a tragedy as far as I'm concerned.

Very sad. I think if she knew for 3 months she was pregnant, that she could have got through to her GP, but there's obviously a lot we don't know.

Isn’t the limit like 26 weeks though? By that time babies can survive in ICU… that’s infanticide not abortion. And very much not ok.

I absolutely support a woman’s right to choose by the way. But not the right to choose when the baby is effectively viable.

What a waste of time that will be. 😞

Over two years of her children’s lives. I hope she and her children get to be together when she gets out. I think this will have a huge impact on her children and it all just feels so unnecessary to harm them.