Woman jailed over (very late on in pregnancy) abortion, released on appeal...

[FadeAwayAndRadiate]

Carla Foster: Mother jailed over lockdown abortion to be released - BBC News

So should she have been released? Or made to serve her sentence?

YABU, no she should NOT have been released.

YANBU, yes she SHOULD have been released.

Interested to hear people views.

That’s immaterial though if you believe in ‘your body your choice’ as an absolute concept. It means you should have full 100% control over your body even if what you do shocks or disgusts society. So, naked rambling anyone?

Exactly. Beyond the 24 week limit abortion is only allowed if:
*the woman's life is in danger
*there is a severe fetal abnormality, or
*the woman is at risk of grave physical and mental injury.

Those didn't apply, so her actions were illegal.

Thanks for voting, and for your responses by the way.

For the record, I don't think she should have been released, and should have done her time. It was awful what she did IMO.

I’m so pleased she’s been released. To be that desperate is incredibly sad.

I don't really understand why she didn't have the child adopted, she had to give birth anyway, so why kill a perfectly viable baby. I am pro-choice within the legal limits and what she did was awful and illegal so it was right she was tried and sentenced.

Her body is her body. Full stop

Full stop? Her actions lead to the death of a baby, not a foetus.

The truth is the government is at fault because it should never have happened. They should have prioritied healthcare such as this during the pandemic. Then she would have been scanned and not given the pills. They created a system that was blatantly open to misuse.

I don't think she was in her right mind when she did it, but she did it in full knowledge of what she was doing. It creates a difficult situation. What she did was wrong, she murdered her baby, that baby would have likely lived even born at that gestation in a hospital setting. But I also can't see why putting her in prison is best for her other children or herself. She's not likely to reoffend, and she has to live with herself and the world knowing what she did. The biggest person she is a risk to is herself. She needs substantial mental health treatment.

Naked rambling isn't illegal either.

There was a scholar on Twitter discussing this at the time of the original judgement. She has worked with women who have done this and was underlining that it is extremely complicated psychologically. The women she has worked with feel so utterly desperate that they can’t understand the reality of the baby as existing. It’s like the most extreme form of denial imaginable. It’s not at all similar to the psychology of most neglect cases.

No but do you think a grown man should be able to walk naked past a primary school every day on his way to the shop?

People do such desperate things not in their right minds. We've all heard the stories of back alley abortions etc before they were medically available. Women have and will do extreme things even to the detriment of their own lives.

This is quite a delicate debate. This wasn't an abortion at a stage where it wouldn't be described as a viable baby, this took place when the baby was viable.

This does remind me of the recent case in the US, the (I believe) 19 year old, gave birth in hospital toilets and discarded the poor baby.

The reactions (I'm just going off what I've observed on social media) , seem different, and I'm wondering why?

She induced early labour and the baby didn't survive we aren't talking about a drug that just kills the baby. Mifepristone blocks the hormones maintaining the pregnancy so the womb starts to break down, misoprostol then cause the uterus to contract expelling the baby. Misoprostol can be used to induce labour. The question isn't whether she knew what she was doing, rather does the right of the mum to not carry the baby to term when suffering mentally mean less than the rights of the baby not to be born early at risk of death.

I believe life begins at delivery but we shouldn't expect HCPs to abort viable babies.

Hopefully if abortion drugs are available online it's helps prevent this happening again. I don't think she deserve prison she needs mental health help.

I support abortion to term - her body, her choice, but I’m not convinced this was much of an informed choice. The psychology of this is as others have alluded to, complex.

I aLeo think it’s unfair on her existing children being deprived of their mother.

This. She constantly lied about it.

It’s a straw man because even if we legalised it, it would be impossible to implement. However we can’t legalise but not implement it. So it has to stay illegal. And that’s putting the moral arguments aside.

Not. I think there needs to be some limits.

A person shouldn’t be able to offer himself up to be killed and eaten, even if this is his dream (this happened).

People shouldn’t be able to sell their kidneys (or corneas, or liver lobes or lung lobes) to buy a new car or pay their university tuition fees.

Women shouldn’t be able to sign up to exploitative and sometimes medically risky commercial surrogacy arrangements (some US surrogacy contracts are appalling).

Even if you agree a women should be able to terminate a pregnancy whenever that’s an argument for changing the law.

This women lied to obtain drugs illegally to end a viable life. At this stage she was giving birth to a former infant who could have survived and been placed for adoption. She gained nothing by ended that life prematurely, the infant was still the same size dead or alive, what she did was break the law and yes we should question some laws but the time for that is in a place when you are not breaking said laws.

I do find it hard to comprehend because of how she looked up abortion so much earlier on and her various Google searches etc... she could have accessed abortion much earlier.

Perhaps she does need mental health support, perhaps a mental health ward be a better place to provide that support?

I also find it hard because I have had premature babies, I've seen how well formed my 28weekers were and cannot imagine it being legal to terminate that late in pregnancy.

It should be decriminalised. It should not be a criminal matter. Reading about the case in the Guardian, the article said that she was not allowed to see her children, one of whom is autistic. 😞

I don’t think she was desperate as such but more selfish and trying to not get caught out for something so she decided to deceive and act illegally.

She caused harm and suffering to a term baby

I am as pro choice as they come, but what she did wasn’t an abortion, it was murder.

I don’t think she’s safe to be around children she can’t act within the law and made a decision that killed her term baby when she knew she could have accessed safe legal abortion at an earlier stage . I’d be concerned about her judgement in general - she went out of her way to deceive to solve something she saw as an inconvenience? What if in future one of her other dc inconveniences her

I struggle with the difference with ending a child's life at such a late gestation, and the woman who was in the news recently for killing her child moments after it was born.

I say that having had an abortion, but I did so at 8 weeks.