A woman who admitted taking abortion pills after the legal time limit during lockdown has been sentenced to 28 months in prison.

The 44-year-old woman received the medication under the legal ‘pills by post’ scheme during the Covid pandemic. The scheme, which saw the tablets needed to end a pregnancy sent directly to people’s homes, was introduced to ensure abortion was still accessible when clinics were shut due to lockdown restrictions.

Under the pills by post scheme, abortion medication could be supplied after a remote consultation for pregnancies up to 10 weeks. However, the woman – who has three children – admitted taking the pills after the legal time limit. The Guardian reports that the court was told during her hearing that she did not know how advanced her pregnancy was, as lockdown meant she was unable to attend a scan.

The prosecution said that the woman had misled the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the abortion care provider, by telling them she was below the 10 week cutoff point.

Doctors later estimated that the foetus was between 32 to 34 weeks’ gestation at the time of the termination. In England, Wales and Scotland, abortions can generally be carried out up to 24 weeks (with some rare exceptions, such as if the mother’s life is at risk or the child would be born with a severe disability) but the procedure is carried out in a hospital or clinic after 10 weeks.

Prosecutors told the court that the woman had made online searches about abortion, which they said showed “careful planning”, BBC News reported.

The woman will now serve half of her sentence in custody and the remaining under licence, after pleading guilty to procuring drugs to induce an abortion under the Offences Against The Person Act 1861. Despite being introduced before women even had the vote, this legislation is still in place in England and Wales, meaning that abortion is still technically a criminal offence in most of the UK. (Equivalent common law is in place in Scotland.) Under the Act, anyone who procures an abortion should face prosecution, with a maximum sentence of life in prison – the harshest penalty in the world.

With the passage of the landmark Abortion Act in 1967, women in England, Scotland and Wales were given the legal right to terminate unwanted or unviable pregnancies up to 24 weeks. But this only applies if it is deemed that continuing with a pregnancy would pose a risk to a woman’s life or mental or physical health, or if a child is likely to be born with mental or physical abnormalities. Two doctors must also legally authorise the procedure before it can take place. If these conditions are not met, abortion remains illegal.

Conservative MP Caroline Nokes, who is the chair of the Commons Women and Equalities Committee, said that parliament should reconsider abortion legislation, describing the law as “out of date”.

“This is not something that has been debated in any great detail for many years now,” Nokes told BBC Radio 4’s World Tonight programme on Monday (12 June). “And cases like this, although tragic and thankfully very rare, throw into sharp relief that we are relying on legislation that is very out of date.

“It makes a case for parliament to start looking at this issue in detail.”

Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, described the case as “a damning indictment of abortion law in England”, adding that the woman had been “criminalised for seeking healthcare in the middle of a pandemic”.

“Nothing about this conviction serves the public interest or the interests of [the woman] and her children,” Reid continued. “It also reveals the indefensible, ugly truth about the criminalisation of abortion. Opposition to abortion has never been about what’s best for children or women. It has always been about restricting women’s freedom and bodily autonomy.” The Women’s Equality Party is now calling on people to join a protest in London on Saturday 17 June, organised alongside abortion charity BPAS and the Fawcett Society, calling for legal reform to abortion law in Great Britain.

Labour MP Stella Creasy said it is “a hangover from another era that our abortion laws are based not on healthcare considerations, but first and foremost criminal sanctions. This case shows that the failure to address this has very real modern-day implications.

“In the light of repeated attacks on women’s rights and the lack of compassion this case shows, it’s never been more urgent to ensure it is a formal human right of all women in the UK to access a safe, legal and local abortion if she chooses,” Creasy continued.

When Rishi Sunak’s official spokesperson was asked whether the prime minister was confident that criminalising abortion in some circumstances was the correct approach, and he was “not aware of any plans to address that approach”, according to BBC News. The spokesperson added that current laws “balance a woman’s right to safe and legal abortions with the rights of an unborn child” – although under UK law, a foetus is not considered a separate person with legal rights until they are born and draw breath by themselves.

Medics have voiced fears that the case could seriously damage people’s trust in reproductive healthcare in the UK – making patients less likely to be honest about their pregnancies and undermining the ability of abortion services to provide appropriate care. Last year, more than 60 clinicians, organisations, unions and legal professionals wrote to Max Hill, the director of public prosecutions, asking him to “issue urgent guidance to stop the prosecution of women who end their own pregnancies with immediate effect”.

“It is our strong belief that in the 21st century, in the shadow of the overturning of Roe v Wade, it is never in the public interest to prosecute women in these circumstances,” read the open letter.

The experts noted that while abortion is broadly accessible in the UK, “a very small number of women” end a pregnancy outside the parameters laid out in the Abortion Act 1967. “They are often vulnerable women, in desperate situations, many with a complicated obstetric history or a history of mental health problems. However, due to the approach of the Crown Prosecution Service, rather than being provided with support in this moment, some of these women face a terrifying journey of criminalisation.”

At a time when the women’s health ambassador for England is sounding the alarm about how difficult it is for women to access contraception, the need for the decriminalisation of abortion has never been clearer. Politicians must act to reform the UK’s archaic and outdated abortion law – before more women are jailed.

Images: Getty

A woman has been jailed for taking abortion pills after the UK legal time limit