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.

I’d be really interested to know which hospital she was ‘treated’ actually.

My friend had an unplanned pregnancy early in a relationship, her partner was still pressuring her to have an abortion right up to the legal limit, my friend then went into premature labour during the 24th week giving birth at exactly 25 weeks. Fortunately her child survived and, after a very long stay in NICU, is thriving.

My point is that the chain of events that happened to this poor women are hardly unique, and therefore I would have expected a hell of a lot more time than the 24 hours from stillbirth to arrest to be needed for the police to build a strong enough case to arrest her.

The police have behaved shamelessly.

Shamefully damn auto correct.

Pardon my ignorance but what constitutes an illegal abortion in the uk?

This is a really frightening story

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?

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Briefly, a non registered abortionist or trying to do it yourself. Both are illegal, and for good reason. That being said it sounds like the police were very heavy handed in this case.

GingerCake2018 · Today 09:59
My friend had an unplanned pregnancy early in a relationship, her partner was still pressuring her to have an abortion right up to the legal limit, my friend then went into premature labour during the 24th week giving birth at exactly 25 weeks. Fortunately her child survived and, after a very long stay in NICU, is thriving.

My point is that the chain of events that happened to this poor women are hardly unique, and therefore I would have expected a hell of a lot more time than the 24 hours from stillbirth to arrest to be needed for the police to build a strong enough case to arrest her.

The police have behaved shamelessly.

Absolutely, GingerCake.

Agree with scrolling and glamourous there may well have been other safeguarding issues here, but I do not know the facts. Thinking about other situations where trafficking girls and women is happening, the police would not need to arrest the women concerned unless it is for her own protection. They should look for the pimps and “boyfriends” and question them. As I said I don’t know all the facts but equally shocked that this arrest happened at all.

The police have time to deal with this?

You'd imagine they'd struggle for the time. After all, there's protesting women to assault and arrest, arrested women and girls to humiliate and degrade, not to mention the arduous tasks of abducting women, raping and murdering them before burning their bodies in a ditch. I'm amazed they've got the hours spare to be pursuing the possibility of an illegal abortion.

As for @AgathaMystery , reporting an abortion clinic? REALLY? Shame on you.

Indeed. Shame on me.

Abortion clinic without proper facilities (no anaesthetic machine etc) offers to perform illegal abortion (24+3) on a woman when she is too pregnant to safely have such type of abortion (it would have been a surgical, under sedation, at 24+3 gestation - should in fact be a feticide in fetal med dept in a hospital and then a medical abortion - these 2 procedures are not the same in any way).

The Abortion clinic involved is one of the leading providers in the UK.

Shame on me.

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.

A mother who has an abortion not through the “correct” channels is not protected in any way by being criminalised. The purpose of abortion being illegal is to try to pacify people who disagree with abortion, not to protect any one.

Women can be protected from backyard providers the same way everyone is protected from unqualified and unsafe healthcare - by making it easily available on the NHS and cracking down on practitioners who aren’t qualified. None of which would allow for the arrest of a woman just after a still birth or miscarriage.

There's a line that needs to be drawn somewhere, about women killing new born babies. Personally I'd see it always as a woman under extreme stresses, and in need of support. Reading the comments about abandoned new borns, many people don't see it that way and consider it an evil act.

What about when a baby is born extremely prem and the mother makes no attempt to save it?

Whatever the truth behind this case, it was appallingly handled. Poor, poor woman.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh sorry. I should have checked back before speculating!

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.

They held her for 36 hours?

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

@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.