This case concerns one woman’s tragic and unlawful decision to obtain a very late abortion. The balance struck by the law between a woman’s reproductive rights and the rights of her unborn foetus is an emotive and often controversial issue. That is, however, a matter for Parliament and not for the courts.
The 1967 Act requires that such treatment be provided at a clinic or other premises approved by the Secretary of State. Between 2018 and the COVID-19 pandemic, women seeking an early medical abortion were required to attend a clinic for the first part of their treatment but were able to take the second drug, misoprostol, at home. That model of providing abortion services was not sustainable at the height of the pandemic and accordingly, on 30 March 2020, the then Secretary of State for Health & Social Care approved a woman’s home as a suitable place for abortion treatment. The effect of that approval was that abortion services could be provided without the need for an in-person appointment at a clinic. In 2020, the courts dismissed a judicial review claim brought by Christian Concern seeking to challenge the lawfulness of the provision of abortion services by so-called telemedicine.
Some weeks after that change in the law, you, Carla Foster, obtained abortion drugs by a telephone consultation designed only for abortions in the first ten weeks. You were in fact 32-34 weeks pregnant and well beyond the point at which you could lawfully obtain an abortion. Messages found on your phone indicate that you had known of your pregnancy for about three months on 1 February 2020. By mid February, you were conducting internet searches on ways to induce a miscarriage. By the end of February, you were searching for abortion services. Your search on 25 February indicated that you then believed that you were 23 weeks pregnant. Your internet searches continued sporadically through March and April 2020. On 24 April, you searched “I need to have an abortion but I’m past 24 weeks.
On 6 May, you consulted the telemedical service provided by the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. You gave false answers that would have indicated that your Page 2 of 6 pregnancy was 7 weeks and 4 days in length. Abortifacient drugs were then posted out to you
On 9 May, you took mifepristone. That same day you conducted internet searches suggesting that you were 28 weeks pregnant. You then took the misoprostol at around 1pm on 11 May. Two emergency calls were made for medical attention that afternoon and evening. Paramedics attended at 4.25pm in response to a report that you might be having a miscarriage. You gave the paramedics false information and, not realising that you were pregnant, they left. The second call was made at 6.39pm shortly before your daughter, Lily, was stillborn. Paramedics attended at 7pm but all attempts at resuscitation failed and Lily was pronounced dead at 7.45pm. Further internet searches that evening suggested that you believed that you were 30 weeks pregnant.
You originally maintained to medical staff that you were unaware that you were pregnant. You later told a midwife that you had obtained drugs from an abortion clinic and that you believed that you were in the early stages of pregnancy. You said that you realised that you needed to speak to the police. When you did so, you admitted taking abortifacient drugs and that Lily could have been conceived in either October or December 2019, but you maintained that you did not know how far into the pregnancy you had been.
(You love me really.....).