Jailing a mother of three - WTF

[Capitalismwantsyou]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/12/woman-in-uk-jailed-for-28-months-over-taking-abortion-pills-after-legal-time-limit

I don't think so. If the woman chooses to be induced or have a c section at 24 weeks, there's no law to stop her. Unlike PPs relative upthread,.who was forced to have hospital inpatient treatment she didn't want, because the country she was in assigned rights to her foetus.

She lied to obtain medication that it wasn’t safe to use.
She was googling abortion months before, she had plenty of time to abort legally.

I think she’s lucky she didn’t get charged with child destruction.

I am shocked the sentence is so long though, it’s too long and disproportionate in my opinion.

Just don’t understand why she left it so long.

It's an example that it's not OK to just do anything to a fetus, and arguably the fetus should have "rights" to be protected.

That seems very relevant to what other people have been saying in this thread.

There are laws or regulations that apply to doctors, that may well stop her in practice.

Also it's still removing the right to terminate the pregnancy. Being induced isn't the same.

We can protect the fœtus as far as we as a society find reasonable without assigning rights to the foetus because the foetus cannot reasonably have rights while it is inside a human being who has rights. The woman has rights and the fœtus does not, however she or another person attempting to terminate the pregnancy outside of the law will be punished for it. There are options for termination of the pregnancy within the law. This is as reasonable of a balance as I think can be achieved.

I agree, medical professionals would not induce or do a c section preterm just because the woman asked for it and neither of those are the same as termination.

A point of no return is reached at viability. We, as a society decided that at viability it is just too late. It is also too late to change your mind about being a mother when your 2 year old is exhausting you or your 5 year old is vomiting in the middle of the night, or your teenager is shouting and slamming doors etc, lines get crossed and then you just have to deal with it.

I'm not sure it's true or helpful to say the unborn babies don't have any rights currently. It's true that their rights are not judged to be equal to a born child or an adult woman. But there are a a few laws that seem to me to recognise their rights/needs. Doctors won't prescribe the best medicine for a pregnant woman, or even one who might get pregnant, even if she wants it and says she's aware of the risks (eg Roaccutane for acne won't be prescribed unless a woman is on two types of contraception). The abortion laws and time limit of course are recognising the baby's rights after 24 weeks. Heath and safety legislation for workplaces about pregnant women is about protecting the unborn child as well as the woman's health.

It's not removing the right to terminate the pregnancy, because in the UK women don't actually have that as such. The law permits termination up to 24 weeks, and past that in certain circumstances, with the agreement of 2 doctors etc etc. Just as the law permits me to drive my car as long as I have a licence and insurance, up to the point my blood alcohol level is 35ml. The law says X is okay as long as you meet Y conditions.

Being induced isn't the same, but it's the option you've got after 24 weeks which the law doesn't forbid. The law allows for later abortion in some circumstances, including the woman's mental as well as physical health, so it may be that in the event a woman is so set on no longer being pregnant past 24 weeks she says she will kill herself if she can't end the pregnancy, maybe she'd be able to have a termination anyway? I don't know the ins and outs of the criteria.

Criteria for abortion in the UK and abortion statistics can be found here

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/abortion-statistics-for-england-and-wales-2021/abortion-statistics-england-and-wales-2021

Here is the grounds for legal abortion in the UK

Ground A That the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk to the life of the pregnant woman greater than if the pregnancy were terminated.

Ground B That the termination is necessary to prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.

Ground C That the pregnancy has NOT exceeded its 24th week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.

Ground D That the pregnancy has NOT exceeded its 24th week and that the continuance of the pregnancy would involve risk, greater than if the pregnancy were terminated, of injury to the physical or mental health of any existing child(ren) of the family of the pregnant woman.

Ground E That there is substantial risk that if the child were born it would suffer from such physical or mental abnormalities as to be seriously handicapped.

Ground F To save the life of the pregnant woman.

Ground G To prevent grave permanent injury to the physical or mental health of the pregnant woman.

So from that I'm reading that a hypothetical woman who says she is so unbearably distressed by being pregnant that she cannot continue and will end her life if she can't end the pregnancy, would be covered as grounds for termination? IANAL.

The judges hands were tied on that because of how close to the trial date she left it to plead guilty . I'm not sure being out in 14 months is that long all things considered though

It's not removing the right to terminate the pregnancy, because in the UK women don't actually have that as such. The law permits termination up to 24 weeks, and past that in certain circumstances, with the agreement of 2 doctors etc etc.

This is technically correct, but we all know that in practice women can have an abortion "on demand".

But if we think of the abortion law as being more restrictive than that, well that just means that the mother has even less "rights" to control her own body. Abortion laws are limiting a woman’s rights.

I don't know what happens in practice here, how likely it is that she would get the abortion, but I'm guessing that doctors may want to look at her mental health history, have her interviewed by a psychiatrist, and they may consider the possibility that they are being manipulated.

But yes, looks like grounds for a termination.

It would seem so. Yes. IANAL either.

Thanks for posting that detail @PomegranateOfPersephone . The difference in law between 24 weeks and after it is less than I'd realised. The 'serious handicap ' clause is well known I think. But I'd thought the only other reasons were around serious risk to the woman's life, not to her mental health. I wonder if in practice that never really happens because the damage to your mental health of a very late term abortion of a healthy baby is generally worse than the damage of staying pregnant a few more weeks? Or it's just very rare for women to want to abort late term healthy babies even if their mental or physical health is suffering. It's much, much more common to induce a baby early to protect the mother's health - eg with preeclampsia or to start cancer treatment.

On the feminism note it's not anti feminist as such to want to remove the constraints if biology from.women
Some of the original radical feminists like Purdy and Firestone were quite for the possibility of external wombs and thus freeing women sexually and from having to be pregnant. The radical notion that women would then be treated equally to men.
Not necessarily the same as other radical feminists like Greer who talked of matrifocul societies / families or political lesbianism.
The extreme pro choice up to birth doesn't really have a theoretical feminists link apart from maybe neoliberalism choice is king individualism. It is not rooted in any type of radical feminism I know of anyway.

And most feminists are pro men taking responsibility for children not pro choice for men to choose not to pay for or bring up their children. Just raises some interesting ideas about justifications used.

For the record I agree with the current law except should change to regulation and decriminalisation. I think she should not have been jailed. Community service or probation would be better.

For once, the judicial system has done something right.