Woman jailed for illegal abortion at 34 weeks. Thoughts?

Me as well mate. I find this (below) very troubling and disturbing. although as we speak I believe. With what I've read. the Cleft lip/palate one is going through in a bill a parliament. To change the law.
In 2019. 3 were terminated at the end with another 19 within the normal limit. With this issue alone.

Wtf. in this day and age with massive advances in diagnosis and treatment.
Club foot is treatable straight away
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Currently in England, Wales and Scotland, abortion is available de facto on demand up to a 24-week time limit, but if the baby has a disability, including Down’s syndrome, cleft lip and club foot, abortion is legal right up to birth.

 

This. My son was born at 32 weeks, potentially 2 weeks younger than this poor baby. Arms, legs, eyes, little fingers strong enough to grip your big finger, he cried at 32 weeks, what pain must this baby have felt and for how long until it was over

 

Lily by the way, the baby had a name, Lily.

 

Who named it, do you know?

 

Absolutely disgusting.

 

I can't believe we are even debating this nor the stance that 'Jimmy Viz' or Redhelen have adopted. Bringing rape sentencing comparisons into the equation is a fine example of 'whataboutery'.

Whilst I am a firm believer in 'right to choose', a woman's body is her own, and legal abortion, this case is completely different.

Effectively, by taking the drug when she did she basically poisoned the baby ( since is was a viable foetus I choose to call it that). If it had been born and she poisoned it outside the womb we would be talking infanticide and given the pre-planning that was involved we cannot mitigate it by arguing she had mental issues such as, for example, post partum depression.

Abortion due to pregnancy from rape, trapped in a severely abusive relationship, a foetus that early on has been found to be severely mentally/and or physically impaired that would result in a very poor quality of life or suffering. would, for whatever reason, be seriously life threatening to the mother during term are all valid reason to make the difficult decision to terminate but the inconvenience of having a child is of one of them.

Contraception is readily available, albeit some religions do not allow it, and whilst it is not 100% assured, knowing that, if you have sex, there is a small risk you may become pregnant then, barring the reasons for abortion above, you should accept the consequences.

 

I am surprised that Downs is listed. It can be difficult at times for parents with a child who has Downs syndrome but the one or two I knew said they were compensated and rewarded by the fact their kids were loving and kind albeit they need guidance due to the naive innocence with which they often view the World. Nevertheless, given the right environment they usually experience a good quality of life.

Overall the law severely lags behind when it comes to medical science and technological developments. We euthanise horses and animals when they are suffering but a rational human being in constant pain or quadraplegic/degenerative disease and being kept alive only by medical intervention is not allowed to make the decision to terminate their own life at the time of their own choosing. The idea that life must be preserved at all cost that was originally enshrined in the hypocratic oath has long become an anachronism IMO.

 

I think this may have had something to do with it.
So many archaic laws still around.

In the 1940s, a child with Down syndrome had a life expectancy of 12 years. These days, their life expectancy is 60 years and a baby born with Down syndrome could live into their 80s — in line with the general population.15 Mar 2019

 

Don’t agree with a lot of this.

Termination should be an option to women for any reason they see fit. Parenthood should not be forced upon anyone who feels they don’t want it. Abortion isn’t only for those strict circumstances you list.

However in this case it goes way beyond that. She had plenty of time and opportunity even with lockdown and restrictions to terminate the pregnancy months before.

She did not, and she then flagrantly broke the law to kill her child before birth by taking drugs designed to be used only up until 10 weeks gestation - when she was about 34 weeks.

She acted in a planned manner and knew exactly what she was doing, she knew she was lying to get the drugs, and what she was trying to (and did) achieve is against the law. In my view rightly - but that isn’t the only debate here.

Criticisms of the judge and calling him misogynistic are below the belt as well. The law and outline sentencing guidance, which has to be followed under the law, were followed completely.

I feel sympathy for her kids, for the rest of her family. But I have absolutely no feeling other than disgust for this woman. I am an advocate for mental health and well-being - but the more I read about this case, and wade through what seems to be opinion and what are the facts, it seems this woman’s need for mental health assistance are now, due to trauma induced by the realisation of her actions. There is no indication she was in any kind of mental health crisis at the time.

I think the sentence is light.

 

Just confirms what I said in my post about the law lagging behind technological, medical science and social advances.

 

Confused! Have you responded to the right post? We seem to be in broad agreement. I certainly have not mentioned the judge or the law. Which bits of my post do you disagree with (although the right to terminate for any reason even "convenience" I profoundly disagree with). You get pregnant through carelessness suck it up! We are talking about a human life here.

 

As far as I can see, there had to be punishment here, ( what punishment is debateable) she had for whatever reason left this far too late and IMHO at this point went for abortion .If there had been no punishment there is always the chance of another case pushing it further. She knew what she was doing and researched it to bypass the rules.

I am by no way anti abortion , that is the right of any woman as far as I am concerned , but there has to be a limit, its not as if it came as a surprise at this stage, she had ample opportunity to terminate the pregnancy way before it became a 'viable' baby.

 

Been on the back burner since 2019 only at the second reading


https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ions-for-cleft-lip-cleft-palate-and-club-foot

 

See my post #47. "A viable baby" So IMHO for "terminate the pregnancy" read 'infanticide'or'murder'! If she had given birth and THEN poisoned it that is what we would call it.
The end result is the same either way. A human life illegally and immorally terminated!

 

I responded to the right one tekky yeah, as we don’t agree on the circumstances/rights to termination, which is where I started the post - although I did go on to reference other opinions I’ve seen eg misogyny etc which were certainly not part of your post and I didn’t wish to imply they were, apologies if that’s how it reads. Maybe I went off on a tangent - it is an emotive subject matter I guess.

As you say, on this particular case we are broadly in agreement.

 

At 44, you can understand how a woman can confuse the early symptoms of pregnancy with symptoms of the menopause. You can see how that could delay the discovery of the pregnancy. Every year you also hear of - usually younger - women only finding out they were pregnant when they went into labour. This happens. These could be mitigating factors, but it appears from what people are saying this is not the case and the woman was going against the advice of her legal counsel in court which resulted in a harsher sentence.

The sentence was under an old law, but the judge was following the guidelines. Perhaps this case will see the law updated and changed.

Its a mess all around and her poor kids are going to be the worse affected by it all.

 

Honestly don't know how I feel about the punishment but my son was born at 37 weeks and to think someone would kill him 3 weeks earlier is upsetting.

I don't know the full ins and outs and it isn't a case that is black and white. At face value I struggle to empathise with her though.

 

Not one poster on here has countered my assertion that this was pre calculated murder/infanticide, by providing a logical explanation as to why killing a baby that was fully viable in the womb is different than killing it by poisoning after it has been born. The only distinction between the two acts is the location at the time the fatal dose was administered . Now we have an MP arguing any prison sentence is wrong and the law should be changed basically siding with the mother and basically arguing for abortion rights at any time.
EDIT: Looking into this a bit more. Infanticide rather than murder applies when a woman kills a baby under 12 months old . Custodial sentences are very rare as usually the mother has serious mental trauma or other issues which are taken into account ( I did acknowledge mitigating circumstances in my OP)
However, reading the fact about this case it would appear the mother was fully aware of her actions, lied to and misled the authorities to obtain the drugs needed and apparently shows no remorse. Her actions were totally self serving with no regard for the life her unborn baby. On that basis IMO the sentence/charge was wrong, but not as the BPAS and one or two MPs have argued too harsh but too lenient. The law seems not to consider murder as a relevant charge when a woman kills a baby as the assumption seems to be t is due to post natal mental issues (which on most occasions it is) . However there must be odd times such as this that the act was self serving and calculated. If a male partner killed a baby I am pretty sure he would be charged/ convicted with murder and the sentence would be long and hard.

 

It's the age-old question of when does life begin? At what point are you ending the possibility of life and should that be allowed, and if so why and when?
When you take a position of moral absolutism, that is, you either think that all life is sacred and should be preserved - the stance taken by some religions or that no life is sacred until the minute its outside the womb - an extreme pro-abortion stance, then you are sooner or later going to hit a point of discomfort on that line of relative morality - some people might say that anyone raped should be allowed an abortion up to term, or that with certain conditions or depending on the mental state of the mother, and so on and so on.
The fact is the only morally consistent stance is either abortions without question until term, or no abortions at all. I think everything else is kind of difficult to defend.