Abortion Discussion, Part the Fourth

Bit of a shocker this. In England, Scotland and Wales women only have an exemption from prosecution in certain cases from the UK law law banning abortions where-as in N/I they have the right to have an abortion beyond the restraint limit placed on them in mainland Britain. https://www.msn.com/en-ie/news/world/woman-who-took-abortion-pills-after-legal-time-limit-is-jailed-for-28-months/ar-AA1crLDm?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=0f19370c1fc341ba8d284c8db00dc730&ei=14

It seems the judge said that had the woman pleaded guilty in the first place to the charge, she would have got a suspended sentence and not one of imprisonment. That statement by the judge might call into doubt the reasoning for the sentence he gave the woman: I am sending you to prison because you did not plead guilty to the charge at the earliest opportunity, you could have got a suspended custodial sentence instead.

He accepted the remorse and guilt the woman felt about her actions, then added his comment about the prison sentence he gave her. His remark about the letter from the various Royal Medical Colleges being impertinent may add weight to a change in sentence practice as the judge said there was no sentencing guidelines for the offence but the law allowed for a life sentence. He also made reference to a sentence given to another woman of eight [8] years in reference to a separate offence.

She changed her plea from an original not guilty plea to a guilty plea during the proceedings. The judge made it clear that the sentence would have been a suspended custodial sentence had she pleaded guilty earlier in the proceedings so the plea change may have been late in the proceedings when the judgement outcome was plainer to her. However the report did not make that salient point clear so: Moses supposes...

So her kids have their mother taken away from them, and may well end up in care.

Well done judge *slow clap* 🙄

From court reports the woman was clearly very distressed, a suspended sentence would have been appropriate. She's hardly going to reoffend. It seems to be a case of the judge being miffed (about late guilty plea) as much as anything. Did he or she properly consider the consequences for the kids of a needless custodial sentence?

i would expect the judge considered all factors, i would expect he is obligated to do so where and when they are relevant.

remember sending someone to prison can be about the seriousness of the offence, rather then being about whether one may be a danger to the public or could potentially reoffend.

it can also be about sending out a message to others to not do the same thing.

i know.

but unless the appeal throws up something then there looks to me to be no mistake here.

the unborn baby/fetus/whatever term one wants to use was way into viability so this would be a serious enough offence, so would have had to have a custodial sentence.

As the sentence has been given, our discussing it and the reasoning behind the judge's statement is probably moot. I agree with your thinking above re the early guilty plea resulting in a suspended sentence. My point was that the judge seems to have decided to send the woman to prison not for the unlawful offence she chose to commit but for not entering a guilty plea early enough as well as he specifically mentioned that as a reason for the committal sentence he gave her. It seems he might have actually given her a suspended sentence otherwise in respect of the charge he found her guilty of.

It would take a pretty aggressive application of sentencing factors to go from 14 years down to a suspended sentence. As it was the judge went from life to 2 years, with the first year being in custody. so the judge was minded to give as low as sentence as possible. I still maintain the defendant was badly advised. Given the facts as stated a conviction was inevitable. an early guilty plea would have the sensible option from a legal perspective.

that is a fair point. either way her course of action was unwise.

That consideration would make it more difficult to justify reducing a life sentence to non-custodial on the basis of a guilty plea, surely?

A wild guess suggests to me that, with his comment about what he would have done with a first-opportunity guilty plea, the judge was signalling that he was doing his best for the defendant; if he could have reduced the sentence all the way down to non-custodial, he would have.

As for it being bizarre that abortion has not been decriminalised in England, it's as toxic a political issue there as it is in Ireland. The framework for UK abortion law was set in 1967, and reflects a set of compromises between competing views that predominated at that time. There has been extreme reluctance to revisit it, except around the margins. I agree with you that this case may now cause it to be revisited. But that will not necessarily result in decriminalisation; it could just mean a reduction in the maximum sentence, or it could mean some other change that falls short of decriminalisation.

This is still a case that a lot of people will find shocking. The abortion occurred at 32-34 weeks, well after the threshold of viability. If born alive at 32-34 weeks, a baby would be considered only moderately preterm, and would have an excellent likelihood of survival without complications. There's a legitimate debate to be had about the proper societal response to abortion at this stage of pregnancy, but the view that it should attract no legal response at all may not command universal support.

Abortion hasn't been entirely decriminalised in NI; it remains an offence to terminate a pregnancy otherwise than in accordance with the regulations. But the maximum penalty is an unlimited fine, and - crucially - it's not an offence for the woman herself; just for everyone else involved.

This may not be a brilliant scheme overall. What it means in practice is that a woman who wants an abortion outside the regulations can't get any medical or professional assistance; she has to arrange and administer her own abortion, if necessary through lying and concealment. That's not a good combination of incentives, it incentivises exactly what happened in this case.

Oh, I know. But the sentences are that are awarded will all be conditioned by the fact that that is the max. If the max were, say, 5 years then actual sentences would be correspondingly lighter.

She would have known what evidence the prosecution were going to advance. This is routinely disclosed to defendants in advance of the trial. She knew when she put in her plea that the prosecution knew all about her search history.

We're getting a bit sidetracked, though. Obviously the defendant made some poor judgments both at the time she organised the abortion, and in the course of the legal proceeding against her. Equally obviously, she was in a situation of considerable crisis, pressure and stress. Some people deal better with such situations than others, but it's not wholly surprising when poor judgments get made in this situations.

None of that is in dispute, and none of it is unusual. The criminal courts are filled with defendants who have made poor judgments in stressful situations.

The issue is whether a maximum of a life sentence is seen as the appropriate legal response to the poor judgments made in this case and, if not, what is?

well in this scenario the fetus was sufficiently developed as to be viable.

You would a doctor have induced her unnecessarily? Possibly not.

Inducing a miscarriage, even intentionally, is neither murder nor manslaughter (and never has been). That's why it had to be separately criminalised in the 1867 Act.

The life sentence, of course, was considered to be appropriate in 1867, at a time when a lot more offences attracted a life sentence (and at a time, contrary to what you might think, actual sentences served might be dramatically less than those imposed; someone sentenced to life imprisonment in the 1860s would likely be transported to Australia and, if not considered a risk to others, given ticket-of-leave within months).

But it's worth pointing out that assigning a life sentence doesn't mean that the offence was equated to murder, not least because at the time and for nearly a century afterwards murder carried an automatic death sentence. Even today, a wide range of crimes other than murder carry a (potential) life sentence in the UK — manslaughter, false imprisonment, wounding with intent to cause GBH, causing bodily injury by explosives, endangering the safety of railway passengers, making or possessing explosives under suspicious circumstances, infanticide, possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life, robbery, assault with intent to rob, aggravated burglary, torture, endangering safety at aerodromes, rape, sexual activity with a person having a mental disorder impeding choice, paying for sexual services of a child, carrying a firearm with criminal intent . . . the list is very long.

But, yeah, what might have seemed appropriate given sentencing policy and practice, and attitudes to abortion, in the 1860s definitely looks anomalous today. I suspect it has remained in place because the toxicity of abortion politics discourages politicians from attempting any reform, and also because the crime itself is very rarely committed or prosecuted.

As other has pointed out, if this woman had done what she did in Northern Ireland, she would not have committed an offence.

And yet I don't think NI is afflicted with a plague of late-term abortions.

Which suggests that, yeah, there are probably approaches to dealing with these distressing cases that don't depend on criminalisation.

Yesterday, The UK court of appeal overturned the 28 month prison sentence given to Carla Foster for illegally obtaining abortion pills. 45-year-old Carla Foster was handed a 28-month sentence in June; however, the UK Court of Appeal reduced her sentence to 14 months suspended. She will also have to complete 50 days of activity.

She has spent 35 days in Foston Hall Prison and the Court of Appeal heard she was refused any form of communication with her three children, one of whom is autistic, while in prison.

One of the three appeal court judges described the case as “very sad”. Justice Victoria Sharp.commented " “It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment, and where no useful purpose is served by detaining Ms Foster in custody,".

Ohio votes to place abortion rights in the state constitution.

Shows you how out of step with the electorate the Ohio legislators were when they tried to impose a six week ban (since suspended)

With any luck this issue will really hurt the womb watchers electorally.

Safe Access Zones Bill passes final stage in Dail by overwhelming majority

To me this reflects the extensive cross-party pro-choice that now exists in the Dail and suggests the government can go pretty much as far as it wants with liberalisation of the law in the wake of the ongoing review