UK woman sentenced for killing nearly full-term baby by illegal abortion pill use

A woman in the UK has been sentenced to more than two years after she took abortion pills beyond the legal limit of 10 weeks, intentionally killing her baby beyond the legal limit of 24 weeks. She is believed to have been 32 weeks pregnant at the time she took the pills.

According to The Guardian, the woman, Carla Foster, was able to access the abortion pill regimen by mail by lying to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) — the UK’s largest abortion business — and saying she was less than 10 weeks pregnant. In reality, it is believed she was 28 weeks — which is about six to seven months — when she got the pills. However, after the child, Lily, was delivered, doctors determined she was at least 32 weeks. A coroner’s report revealed the baby did not breathe at birth.

After Foster took the pills, she was admitted to the hospital for an emergency complication. Police were called by the hospital staff and Foster told police she had lied to BPAS about how far along she was in her pregnancy in order to secure the pills. She also used Google to search: “I need to have an abortion but I’m past 24 weeks” and “Could I go to jail for aborting my baby at 30 weeks.”

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Abortion is legal in the UK up to 24 weeks for any reason, and after 24 weeks for exceptions such as the mother’s health or the baby receiving a diagnosis. Any abortion after 10 weeks must be committed in a hospital.

The 44-year-old mother of three born children originally pleaded not guilty but ultimately pleaded guilty in March under the Offences against the Person Act. She will serve just half of her 28-month sentence in custody and for the other half, she will be released under certain conditions. There are no sentencing guidelines for such a case, but the maximum sentence she faced was life in prison.

Justice Edward Pepperall, who presided over the case, said: “This case concerns one woman’s tragic and unlawful decision to obtain a late-term abortion. In my judgment your culpability was high … because you knew full well your pregnancy was beyond the limit of 24 weeks, and you deliberately lied to gain access to telemedical services.”

He told Foster, “I accept that you feel very deep and genuine remorse for your actions. You are racked by guilt and have suffered depression. I also accept that you had a very deep emotional attachment to your unborn child and that you are plagued by nightmares and flashbacks to seeing your dead child’s face.”

He said if she hadn’t originally pleaded not guilty, her custodial sentence could have been suspended.

Pro-abortion groups have come out in support of Foster. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the Royal College of Midwives sent a letter to the judge asking for “leniency in this case.” The groups told the judge they were “fearful that if the case before you receives a custodial sentence it may signal to other women who access tele-medical abortion services, or who experience later gestation deliveries, that they risk imprisonment if they seek medical care.”

The judge called the letter “inappropriate” and said he doesn’t agree that placing Foster in custody would deter other women from accessing a lawful abortion prior to the 24-week cutoff. Nor would it instill fear in women who “experience later gestation deliveries.” It is possible that the pro-abortion groups fear women might think twice before having an abortion when hearing about this woman’s story — including her remorse — cutting into the bottom line of abortion profiteers.

Mandu Reid, the leader of the Women’s Equality party, said, “I am devastated for the woman at the centre of this case, and for her children, who have been forcibly separated from their mum… This conviction serves no one, not her, not her children, not the public interest. All it does is punish a woman for seeking healthcare in the middle of a pandemic and risk deterring women who want or need an abortion from seeking that care in future.”

However, if Foster were experiencing a medical emergency or the baby had received a diagnosis, abortion would have been completely legal (though intentional killing is unnecessary) in the hospital. Reid showed no concern for the baby who was “forcibly separated” from Foster, deliberately and knowingly killed well beyond the so-called age of viability. At 32 weeks, the baby was capable of surviving outside the womb but was intentionally killed by her mother.

As a result of this horrific case, Right to Life UK is “calling for the reinstatement of in-person appointments before all abortions take place to ensure that the gestation of babies can accurately be assessed, along with a full inquiry into the abortion provider, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service for sending out abortion pills to a woman whose baby, Lily, was at least 32 weeks gestation, which is 22 weeks beyond the legal limit for at-home abortions.”

The group’s press release also states:

The organisation is also calling for the Government to firmly reject changing legislation to make abortion legal right up to birth, as is proposed by abortion campaigners, led by BPAS, who are cynically using this tragic case to call for the removal of more abortion safeguards and the introduction of abortion up to birth across the United Kingdom.

The conviction shows that abortion laws exist for a reason, and leads to a question: does a human being only deserve protection from intentional killing if he has met an arbitrary standard, such as taking a breath on his own without assistance?

Taking the abortion pill beyond 10 weeks can be very dangerous for the mother. In 2020, after the UK began allowing abortion pills to be mailed, at least two women died after taking the pills. The abortion pill has a known increased risk of incomplete abortion, which can lead to infection and death.

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