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

[SwissBall]

apple.news/AOG-G5JvRShu3qWU3l_SAwQ

Held in custody for 36 hours.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/woman-police-custody-stillborn-birth-b2111991.html

sorry I realise the Apple link won’t work for everyone

WTAF?!? I opened this thinking it would be about another country. That this can and does happen in mainland Britain shocks me to the core. How utterly heartless must all those involved in this shit be?

That is just plain wrong. Discharged from hospital into police custody??! Wtf. Even if this needed to be criminally investigated how is this any kind of an urgent issue that means the woman needed to be arrested and held in police cells?

The UK urgently needs to remove this from criminal law and make it a healthcare only issue.

That’s horrendous, the poor woman.

WTF is going on?

“The police arrested her in hospital. She stayed the night in hospital and then was discharged the following morning straight into police custody. It took them 36 hours to process her.”

Even if she had performed an "illegal" abortion how the hell is this justified??

I too thought the headline was about a woman in another country. Poor woman.

The police have time to deal with this?

I followed the Apple News link and and in related articles, this appeared:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ohio-abortion-law-rape-incest-b2115646.html

I feel sick just thinking about it. Of course a foetus is more important than the health and well-being of a 10YO girl who has been raped.

Fucking hell

From the Independent article

“She has still got PTSD,” he added. “Not from the event of the delivery, but from being labelled as a criminal and held in custody. She knows she is under investigation but does not know what for. The police confiscated her phone and laptop”.

Dr Lord, who contributed to drawing up the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) abortion care guideline and quality standards committees, added that he has access to the birth weight and measurements of the stillborn child and is confident it is under 24 weeks

He also gave the example of a young teenage girl they supported who was investigated by the police after she gave birth to a stillborn at 28 weeks of pregnancy last year.

It comes after Freedom of Information requests obtained via NationalWorld last week revealed at least 17 women have been investigated by police in England and Wales over the past eight years for having illegal abortions or trying to terminate pregnancies.

The police arrested her in hospital. She stayed the night in hospital and then was discharged the following morning straight into police custody. It took them 36 hours to process her.

This is horrendous behaviour on the part of the police. How stupid and callous can they be?

Poor, poor woman.

Even if she had had an abortion after 24 weeks, any sane person would know that no woman would do this unless for some reason something had gone badly wrong and they had found themselves in an extreme predicament - any ‘arrest’ should be no more than a quiet enquiry - in due course only - after the well-being of the woman was ascertained.

It is not illegal anyway after 24 weeks if the signature of two doctors can be obtained. This used to be a formality really even years ago. So, someone who hasn’t managed to get those signatures is not more ‘criminal’ than someone who has.

As the police can’t be trusted not to act like idiot brutes who abuse their power and have no sense of restraint or discretion, then the law needs removing.

I know two people who did not know they were pregnant for a long time - one only just before she got pre-eclampsia and gave birth. People don’t always even know how many weeks pregnant they are.

Is there any petition going against these police, or to change this law?

NyanBinaryJohn · Today 22:29
The police have time to deal with this?

I followed the Apple News link and and in related articles, this appeared:

[[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ohio-abortion-law-rape-incest-b2115646.html www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/ohio-abortion-law-rape-incest-b2115646.htmlXV0=

I feel sick just thinking about it. Of course a foetus is more important than the health and well-being of a 10YO girl who has been raped.

I have just read your link. I don’t blame you, so do I.

Look what the Ohio.legislator said!

“Last week, the Ohio legislator who sponsored a bill to ban nearly all abortions in the state said “to end the pregnancy of the child is not going to erase those wounds or those scars” and that a child conceived from rape or incest “still has the right to life.”

What do they think life actually is? Will they be paying for that 10 year olds health care? No. That of the baby. No. Better schools. No. Somewhere to live.No.

Will they be allowing assault weapons to all those who want them to facilitate the murder of lives? Yes. Wars. Yes.

What the fucking fucking fuck is going on?

Blessed be the fruit.

So it was healthcare staff who called the police? Bastards.
And the police have been investigating her for A YEAR AND A HALF. Just sickening.

Unless the fruit is 10 and raped by an adult male.

Not all fruit are equal.

I'm not sure any health care professional would've reported a stillbirth as a potential illegal abortion unless they had genuine or valid concerns as to why it may possibly have been an illegal abortion.

Depending on how the woman reacted to the stillbirth, on things she said or didn't say - something brought this to the attention of medical teams who deal with stillbirth on a daily basis, and it made them believe she did it on purpose.

Abortion is only legal through the correct channels. This is also to protect the fetus/baby from any suffering in the process, and also the mother.

The police have totally mishandled it, yes. But the medical teams wouldn't have raised an alarm without valid cause. Though I'm pretty sure a post mortem/tissue sampling on the remains would've told them everything they'd need to know.

Yes, this is what I am thinking, late stillbirths like that aren't common but they also are not so rare that medical staff don't have any experience dealing with them. An illegal abortion at that stage is pretty invasive and dangerous, that represents a danger to the public just as much as some guy doing illegal castrations. There is a lot of scope for it to go wrong.

Abortion is only legal through the correct channels. This is also to protect the fetus/baby from any suffering in the process, and also the mother.

From the report: She had been in touch with a provider of correct channels. Then had had a still birth. She told the hospital staff this. They then made assumptions and told the police.

But even if she had had an illegal abortion, not through the correct channels, and the police wanted to look into who that back street abortionist was, how dare they arrest her in hospital after her ordeal xand hold her for 36 hours. What possible threat was she to anyone. How could they think that any but the most sensitive approach was warranted?

All I can think is that any woman who was trying to cause their own ‘illegal’ abortion in this country must either:

• Have been horribly let down by the NHS provision for terminating pregnancies. A proper, safe, supported termination and care should have been available to her. Or


• Be in a really terrible personal situation where she was unable to access a safe and legal termination and desperately felt she couldn’t continue with her pregnancy (probably because of the dire situation she’s in).

Neither of those scenarios merits arrest. I’m either case the woman needs support and sympathy for what must have been a horrible situation. In the first, the answer is fixing the system that let her down. In the second, it’s sorting whatever terrible situation she’s in. At no point is arresting and criminalising her a good way to approach this.

And then there’s the consideration that it may have been a stillbirth with no unofficial attempts to end the pregnancy. The cruelty of arresting a woman in this situation for illegally aborting her stillborn child is just unimaginable.

Given that I cannot imagine a situation where a woman in this country would choose an unofficial route to terminating a pregnancy if there weren’t some big barrier to her accessing a safe, legal one, surely the only humane thing to do is to err on the side of not ever arresting someone in this situation.

That was in reply to MiniPiccolo - yesterday 23:54
saying:
Abortion is only legal through the correct channels. This is also to protect the fetus/baby from any suffering in the process, and also the mother.

I agree.

If there’s a backstreet abortionist involved, then that’s the danger to the public - it’s not the woman desperate enough to use that service.

if a woman contacts legal termination services and ends up in some dodgy backstreet clinic, then it’s also a sign that something went very wrong in how the service handled her case.

There is no reason to arrest the woman in this situation.

Even if she had had an abortion after 24 weeks, any sane person would know that no woman would do this unless for some reason something had gone badly wrong and they had found themselves in an extreme predicament

If you're talking about medical issues, no, this presumably wasn't the reason she was trying to end the pregnancy. If there was some grisly medical complication, she would have undergone a late term abortion properly in a hospital.

Echoing others above, but the fact the HCPs raised the alarm suggest that there was something deeply concerning going on here. UK HCPs are almost always very supportive of women's right to abortion do not have a track record of trying to "stop abortions"--this isn't the Republic of Ireland circa 1970. They will have seen some major red flags going on here.

Labour MP Stella Creasy said action was needed to enshrine access to abortion in law as a human right and is calling for it to be included in Britain’s bill of rights, which is going through parliament.She said cases where women were suspected of inducing a miscarriage should be approached as safeguarding issues in most circumstances, rather than criminal ones.
From the Guardian:

www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/02/women-accused-of-abortions-in-england-and-wales-after-miscarriages-and-stillbirths

You can’t imagine any other kind of ‘extreme predicament’ beyond medical issues?

Not all HCPs in the UK are supportive of abortions either. That’s a very naive view.

regardless, HCPs don’t have to be trying to stop women from terminating a pregnancy for the system to screw up and horribly let a woman down.

if a woman contacts legal termination services and ends up in some dodgy backstreet clinic, then it’s also a sign that something went very wrong in how the service handled her case.

Maybe, but I don't think I agree with the idea that it's always the case that a woman seeking such a late abortion will always have some serious medical reason. It would be nice if human beings were like that, but sometimes they aren't. People will do some desperate things that don't meet the criteria of medical necessity, and there are people in the world who don't care, awful as that is. There are people who will try and dispose of or simply neglect a newborn until it dies, no its not common but it does happen.

Now arguably she was probably vulnerable in some way if she was willing to go so far as to see an illegal provider, but was that clear to whomever she saw, it's possible that it wasn't. People sometimes try to hide things like that.

It's possible they didn't want to let her go home because they thought she was a flight risk or she didn't have a fixed address.

Now arguably she was probably vulnerable in some way if she was willing to go so far as to see an illegal provider, but was that clear to whomever she saw, it's possible that it wasn't. People sometimes try to hide things like that.

It's possible they didn't want to let her go home because they thought she was a flight risk or she didn't have a fixed address

Not a particularly crucial light risk compared to criminals in general. She did have a fixed address. She had been in touch with a legal, medical provider if abortions but then had a still birth.

Jonathan Lord, medical director of MSI Reproductive Choices, one of the UK’s leading abortion providers, told The Independent the woman unexpectedly delivered a stillborn foetus at home that was about 24 weeks old. ……. Note the baby was born dead at home. So she had a fixed address.

^The woman, who was in her early forties, had the stillbirth last year after getting in touch with MSI Reproductive Choices to inquire about an unwanted pregnancy and abortion…..,Note, she had been in touch with a legal, medical abortion clinic*

Dr Lord, the co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers, who shared the woman’s story with The Independent, said: “She was shocked to give birth due to not knowing how far along pregnant she was. She was admitted to hospital.