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

She may have not killed a baby but aborted a foetus but it's still illegal over 24 weeks, which is about 4 weeks too late IMO.

It would have been awful to go through giving birth at that late a gestation regardless of what ended the foetuses life and surely as a mother she would have known she'd have to give birth. I can't decide whether she was deranged and in a really bad place due to other factors in her life or a cold calculating abortionist (??)

Either way having children should make you less likely to commit a crime so as your children aren't deprived of a mother, it shouldn't be a reason for not being punished for a crime.

That poor poor woman- she obviously suffers from a mental illness. To knowingly do that?! I hope she gets appropriate mental health help in jail.
RIP the wee baba

How do we not send women to jail, other than through decriminalising abortion?

I didn't get to say this on the AIBU thread because it filled up so fast but...

I don't think that abortion is a particularly moral thing to do, especially after the point at which the baby feels pain. Hence why I say "as early as possible".

This doesn't stop me from recognising that a woman can only be a full person within society if she has full bodily autonomy, which necessitates supporting free legal abortion until birth, hence "as late as necessary, on demand, and free of charge". If there's any point at which the law prohibits her from ending the pregnancy, then she's transformed in law from a person into a walking incubator whose interests are secondary to that of the baby.

The reluctance that many on this thread and the AIBU thread show to jailing the woman mentioned in the OP indicates that some of you reject the logical consequence of criminalising late-term abortions, which is jailing women. The logical stance, if you don't want women jailed, is to support decriminalisation. You can advocate for decriminalisation without endorsing late abortion as a morally desirable act. As I said, "as early as possible".

Yes it could well be relevant in considering why she took the course of action she did.

I'm saying that I don't think it should be considered somehow worse if she was pregnant by a man other than her partner. In that sense, it's absolutely not relevant. Someone upthread said effectively that she deserves to suffer because she was having an affair! Thankfully a woman's sex life doesn't factor into sentencing her for crimes. Because its not bloody relevant!

Sure it ain't. https://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/south/07/07/india.infanticide.pt1/index.html

There is obviously some sort of difference in location and using the mother's body.

But it's unquestionably a human life, (late stage of pregnancy), unless you take the radical step of saying that a newborn baby isn't.

And if some people are saying that women can make that choice, "for any reason", then that includes just wanting to end the life of the unborn and not have them in the world.

So it's not that it's more difficult to give the baby over to someone else's care, it's that they just don't want it to be cared for at all.

I say again: "The argument is then about whether she has the right to decide how and when the baby leaves her body at that stage in the pregnancy."

And if some people are saying that women can make that choice, "for any reason", then that includes just wanting to end the life of the unborn and not have them in the world.

The alternative is policing what women do with their own bodies in late-stage pregnancy and risking criminalising doctors for late-stage pregnancy terminations. I'm not comfortable with making a woman stay pregnant if she doesn't want to be, nor am I comfortable making a doctor have to worry about being arrested and charged because his/her patient wasn't quite sick enough to justify an abortion in the eyes of the law.

In the AIBU thread, I suggested that a woman in later pregnancy could be effectively imprisoned in a hospital in a foreign country because broken waters and preeclampsia would require blood pressure monitoring every two hours and render her unfit to fly home. That example isn't hypothetical, I'm describing what happened to one of my cousins.

If, unlike Dcousin, that woman were to say "I don't want to spend 12 weeks confined to a foreign hospital and then give birth in a foreign country, I want an abortion so that I can go home", should she be forced to stay pregnant?

I don't know. There are women who kill their infants, or neglect them because they don't give a shit. One of the most horrific cases I ever read about involved an infant that starved sitting in a car-seat while the mother played video games.

The fact that someone is screwed up does not mean they aren't culpable for bad things they do, or killing, be it in some kind of accident or negligence or whatever. That's how all crimes are treated.

Crimes where desperate mothers do things like throw newborn babies in trash bins often do have fairly light sentences, because the problems involved are acknowledged. In this case I think its a more severe sentence because it does not look like that at all, it looks like this was a person who was pretty selfish failing to act responsibly over a long period of time.

If unlike Dcousin, that woman were to say "I don't want to spend 12 weeks confined to a foreign hospital and then give birth in a foreign country, I want an abortion so that I can go home", should she be forced to stay pregnant?

She could have pets, elderly parents, other DCs (one of my other cousins was Hagued and for years couldn't take her kids abroad with her, she had to get live-in child care to come over for her own DF's funeral), a job that she'd be deemed to have abandoned if she stays away for twelve weeks...

It is absolutely appalling and I completely agree with Stella Creasey's comments.

Me too.

She is 45 years old with 3 children already and perhaps couldn't face another pregnancy. Most women would understand possible desperation. Current law affords more empathy and consideration to a rapist who attacked a 13 year old child.
I hope there will be a successful appeal.

I’m not in the UK. As I understand it, you can have a pregnancy terminated later than this woman terminated hers as long as you do it the ‘right’ ‘legally sanctioned’ way and meet certain criteria. For various reasons including the womens mental health being at risk. Am I wrong? I’m not in the UK and not sure of the laws on this.

But if it is possible to have a very late term abortion legally I’d she just being sent to prison for not doing it in the ‘legal’ way. Is this about just telling lies on a form?

God, that's awful 😥
It shouldn't be a criminal offence to have an abortion.
You don't know the circumstances behind each decision.
She seems to be struggling here, what is putting her in prison going to achieve?
Women should have bodily autonomy

Exactly, I'm 46 with kids I love very much but if I was to find out I was pregnant again like 20 years after last being pregnant, no I've done all that! Don't think I'd cope going through it all again and startling over on the newborn days again.

I agree

As I understand the reporting she didn't want her husband to know she was pregnant by someone else and tried to cover up the pregnancy. She had months to seek professional, confidential support and she knew she pregnant a long time before, as her internet searches show. Just because someone "has their reasons" doesn't make it legal.

I'm not 100% sure on this, but I don't think the mental health criteria applies after 24 weeks?

I honestly cannot believe some of the comments from people who believe that anyone should be able to abort a baby at any gestation for any reason! Are you honestly saying that it should be permissible to abort (kill) a baby at 38 weeks because the mother has changed her mind???

I despair at the state of humanity.

The legislation in question is the Abortion Act 1967.

Basically, abortion is illegal. A doctor can perform an abortion if two doctors agree that a woman needs one. The grounds that the doctors are allowed to use to say that you need an abortion are much more restricted after 24 weeks, which means in practice 22 weeks because of dating inaccuracies and time between referral and procedure.

The woman in question lied about how far along she was to trick the doctors into posting abortion medication to her when she was more than 24 weeks along, so too late to get any kind of abortion unless two doctors agreed that her life or health was at genuine risk. So the woman is treated in law as someone who has self-aborted, which is illegal.

Realistically, women aren't going to do a u-turn on wanting a baby at 38 weeks, and certainly not for no good reason. What kind of circumstances would precipitate such a radical change of heart so late on? Which do you think will serve her and the public interest better?

• A lawful medical referral path that will, that late on, absolutely involve asking her why the change of heart, is she scared of childbirth, is she being abused etc, a full discussion of possible delivery arrangements and post-natal options, with foetal euthanasia prior to extraction if she remains sure.
• No lawful options other than "stay pregnant", with high risk of self-abortion, infanticide, child abandonment, post-natal depression, child neglect, birth trauma, and maternal suicide.

“Foetal euthanasia” aka killing the baby. Followed by “extraction”??? Words fail me. There are laws for a reason and a civilised society should not allow people to do certain things. Killing full term babies is one of those things. Of course, I am not talking about situations where the mother and/or baby has a medical issue which necessitates medical intervention but “not wanting to be pregnant / have a baby” is not a reason.

If you have got to this stage of pregnancy then the only way out involves giving birth regardless of whether the baby is alive. There is no reason why a live child could not instead be adopted at birth. Terminating at this stage is unforgivable and just because it is rare does not mean that it should be legally facilitated.

but “not wanting to be pregnant / have a baby” is not a reason.
Yes, it is. Are we adults with bodily autonomy or not?
You can't or at least shouldn't be able to dictate what another adult does with their body.

@BodgerLovesMashedPotato - so get an abortion within the time limit… your own bodily autonomy stops at the point where it violates another person’s rights. I am a very much pro choice but there are limits and the law has quite rightly drawn the line here.

past viability; c/s, adoption and mental health services.
treated as a medical emergency via any hospital emergency services.

So then, you are an extremist. There is no other way to describe this position.

Abortion rights are based on a woman choosing not to remain pregnant, for whatever reason. They're not based specifically on some kind of inalienable moral right to end a life because it happens to be located in your uterus.

There is no physical or moral difference between a slightly premature baby (or foetus? I don't know if the terminology changes at birth or at a specific stage of development?) born around 39 weeks and a foetus in the womb at 39 weeks, and the woman in this scenario has already been pregnant for almost 9 months and will have to give birth either way.

I understand this would be an extremely unusual situation and almost zero women would choose an abortion at this gestation, although it's probably naive to think the number would be zero. But even as a thought experiment or a theoretical principle, it's harmful.

I'm pro-choice but this fundamentalist viewpoint of 'as late as necessary' just fuels the pro-life brigade who love to characterise women as morally vacuous baby killers. There is a balance in the law based on viability (and in fact other developmental markers that correspond with viability), allowing time for a woman to be aware that she is pregnant and make the choice to terminate, and acknowledging abortion as a protective measure for a woman's mental and/or physical health. None of that means there isn't another life involved, it simply means that pregnancy is a specific scenario in which that life is
a) at an early, non-viable developmental stage, absent a functioning nervous system/sentience etc.
and
b) entirely reliant on a woman's body, a woman who may be physically or psychologically unable to continue or, yes, simply not want to be pregnant anymore (although the latter reason is not given in law which I would argue it should be.)

These factors are balanced against the status of the foetus at different stages of development and the cut-off point is probably about right IMO as far as the law is concerned, and of course this does not apply in cases where the life of the mother is at risk during either pregnancy or birth.

What you're saying is, a woman's right to choose is a woman's right to end a life but actually it's her right to end a pregnancy that is the question. In a situation where the pregnancy is all but over anyway you are simply advocating for infanticide.