In May 2020, two months into the pandemic, Carla Foster, a 44-year-old mother-of-three took pills at home to trigger an abortion. The foetus – a girl – was between 32 and 34 weeks old; a viable age for survival outside of the womb. On Monday, the mother was jailed for 28 months (with half of the sentence to be served on licence).
After the judgment was handed down, abortion campaign groups, women’s rights activists and a host of MPs immediately rushed to share their outrage at the decision. Stella Creasy tweeted that Foster had been jailed for having ‘an abortion without following correct procedures’ and called for a change in the law while Caroline Nokes, the chair of the women and equalities committee, said it made ‘a case for parliament to start looking at this issue in detail’.
It is a mercy that English women are able to access abortions with relative ease
This is a tragic case: a heartbreaking clash between healthcare and law in which a baby died and three other children lost their mother to prison.
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