British woman (44) gets 28 months in prison for taking abortion pill after legal limit | Abroad

Foster got into abortion pills with the ‘pills by post’ scheme, introduced in the UK during the coronavirus pandemic. It made it possible to terminate pregnancies at home for up to 10 weeks. Under British law, abortion is also legal up to 24 weeks, but after 10 weeks, the procedure is performed in a clinic. So Foster did not follow that law, because the woman turned out to be between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant when she took the medication.

On May 11, 2020, after taking the medication, an emergency call was made to report that she was in labor. The baby was not breathing after birth, and was pronounced dead about 45 minutes later. The official cause of death was recorded as stillbirth and maternal use of abortion medication.

Prosecutors argued that Foster “carefully” planned the abortion. This is according to several searches between February and May 2020, in which she searched the internet for “how to hide a pregnancy”, “how to have an abortion without going to the doctor” and “how to lose a baby at six months ”.

Foster’s defense spoke again about limited access to health care during the lockdown, forcing her to search for information online. “The defendant absolutely would have used the services had they been available at the time,” said Foster’s attorney Barry White.

The court also learned that she had moved back in with her estranged partner at the start of the lockdown while pregnant by another man. The judge accepted that she was “emotionally confused” when she terminated her pregnancy. In addition, the woman already had three children, one of whom was disabled, who would suffer from Foster’s pregnancy.

The woman was initially charged with infanticide, which she denied. She later pleaded guilty to an alternate charge of administering medication or using devices to perform an abortion. Foster was eventually sentenced to 28 months in prison, with 14 months suspended. The judge said he might have considered suspending her sentence if she had pleaded guilty sooner.

A letter was sent to the court ahead of the hearing, signed by a number of women’s health organisations, calling for a fully suspended sentence. However, the judge found that letter “not appropriate”. He added that it was his duty to “apply the law as determined by parliament”.

And that law is now labeled “archaic” by the British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS). The BPAS said it was “shocked and appalled” by Foster’s sentence and that “no woman should ever go through this again.” CEO Clare Murphy thinks parliament should do more to provide protection so that “women in these desperate circumstances are no longer threatened with prison”.

Labor MP Stella Creasy, meanwhile, called for “urgent reform”. In a tweet, she noted that an average prison sentence for a violent crime in England is 18 months, and that Foster has now been sentenced to 28 months.

The Public Prosecution Service responds that “these exceptional cases are complex and traumatic”. It also denotes the prosecutors’ duty to “ensure that laws enacted by parliament are properly considered and applied when making difficult decisions.”

Current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak believes that the current laws are balanced, says his spokesman. Our current laws balance a woman’s right to access safe and legal abortions with the rights of an unborn child. “I am not aware of any plans to change that approach.”