Latest news with #CarlaFoster
The Age
2 days ago
- Health
- The Age
British parliament votes to end ‘cruel' abortion prosecutions for women
In 2023, Carla Foster received a 28-month prison sentence after she admitted taking abortion pills to induce a miscarriage during the initial COVID lockdown in 2020, when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant. She was released after just one month in custody following a successful appeal. Another case involved Nicola Packer, who was charged after taking the medications mifepristone and misoprostol at about 26 weeks of pregnancy. She denied knowing that she was more than 10 weeks pregnant and was acquitted by a jury. The reform does not extend to medical professionals or anyone else involved in abortions performed outside existing legal frameworks. Nor does it alter the clinical requirements of the 1967 Act, which permits abortions up to 24 weeks with authorisation from two doctors, and after that point only under limited and exceptional circumstances. Not all within the government backed the change. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood opposed the amendment, warning of risks it might introduce. 'I am deeply concerned to see these measures being progressed in the name of women's rights, when the potential physical and mental impacts on women would be so devastating,' she wrote to constituents. 'I oppose extending abortions up until the point of birth beyond the exemptions that currently exist, as doing so would not only be unnecessary but dangerous.' Antoniazzi made clear the measure would not affect healthcare provisions: the clause 'would not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting', she said, reiterating that the current time limits and clinical conditions would remain. The UK vote lands at a moment of flux in abortion access across Europe, where legal protections are often undermined by logistical or cultural barriers. Despite most EU countries allowing abortion under certain conditions, many women — an estimated 4500 in 2022 — still travel abroad to access care. Loading The Netherlands received 2762 women from Germany, Poland, Belgium, France, and Ireland in 2022 alone. Spain recorded about 1500 cross-border abortion cases in the same year. Hundreds more travelled to the UK for the same reason. Notably, only two EU member states – Malta and Poland – impose near-total bans. But restrictive time limits, a lack of providers and religious or cultural resistance elsewhere mean that abortion, while legal on paper, is inaccessible in practice. Women in France, Italy, and Croatia, for example, often struggle to access care due to 'conscientious objectors' – doctors who refuse to perform abortions. In some Italian regions, up to 90 per cent of physicians decline to carry out the procedure. Even in France, one-third of the UK-based Abortion Support Network's clients are French, many from rural areas without clinics. A recent survey found the average delay between discovering a pregnancy and accessing an abortion was four weeks – often because of waiting periods, lack of information, or difficulty in securing funds and time off work. A citizen-led initiative titled My Voice, My Choice has gathered more than a million signatures calling on the EU to fund abortion access across borders. But progress has been slow. The EU's health commissioner said the bloc 'stands ready to support member states,' but reiterated that abortion remains a matter of national jurisdiction.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Calls for abortion law change grew louder as number of prosecutions rose
Calls for decriminalisation of abortions have been growing louder in recent years – in line with a growing number of women being prosecuted for terminating their pregnancies. Until 2022, it is believed that only three women had ever been convicted of having an illegal abortion in the 150 years since 1861, when the procedure was made illegal under the Offences Against the Person Act. But in the last four years, at least half a dozen women have found themselves in the dock of a crown court accused of ending their pregnancy, and dozens more have been arrested or investigated by police. Two high-profile cases in particular fuelled the calls for change. Carla Foster was jailed in 2023 for an illegal abortion, before having her sentence suspended a month later by the court of appeal. And just weeks ago, Nicola Packer was cleared by a jury after spending almost five years facing the threat of prison. Related: British women are being jailed under archaic abortion laws. MPs can act to end that this week | Frances Ryan Thirteen people, both men and women, made a first appearance at magistrates court charged with abortion-related offences in 2022, according to freedom of information data from the Crown Prosecution Service, compared with four people in 2019 and three in both 2020 and 2021. Data from about half of Britain's police forces showed at least 11 people were arrested in 2023 on suspicion of child destruction or inducing a miscarriage, including a 31-year-old woman in north Wales 'reported to have taken illicit substances to initiate an abortion'. There are several more known cases of women arrested in the past 18 months that are not included in the data. In the last parliament, Diana Johnson, now a Home Office minister, attempted to change the law by bringing an amendment to the previous government's criminal justice bill, but the 2024 general election meant the legislation never made its way through parliament. Parliament had already brought in a move towards more liberal abortion laws. In 2020 telemedicine brought the biggest reform to abortion provision in England and Wales since the 1967 Abortion Act, which set out the current framework by which terminations can be carried out. Instead of women seeking a termination in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy needing to take the first pill under medical supervision, they could receive both pills by post after a remote consultation. Although it was introduced as an emergency measure during the pandemic, telemedicine was made permanent in 2022, with MPs voting 215 in favour to 188 against. The same year, parliament also voted 297-110 to introduce safe access zones, commonly known as 'buffer zones' around clinics, to stop women seeking abortion care from being harassed by protesters. In 2019, Northern Ireland's abortion laws were also modernised, with terminations allowed up to 12 weeks, and later under limited circumstances. In a referendum in 2018, Ireland had also made abortion legal on request up to 12 weeks, and later if the foetus would be likely to die before or shortly after birth or if there is a risk of death or serious harm to a pregnant woman. In both Northern Ireland and Ireland, the culpability for a termination carried out outside legal time frames lies with anyone who assists a woman procure an abortion, rather than the woman herself. Both countries had also previously had some of the strictest abortion laws in the world, with terminations banned in almost all circumstances. In other parts of the world, change is moving in the opposite direction. In June 2022, the United States supreme court overturned the decision of Roe v Wade, and ruled there was no constitutional right to abortion. Laws are instead now decided state by state, with 19 of them either banning abortion or restricting access. Parliament's latest vote is unlikely be the last on the subject. Medics, lawyers, politicians and campaigners recognise that the 1967 act is in need of reform. Work to establish what a new framework should look like has already begun, but as Louise McCudden, UK head of external affairs at MSI Reproductive Choices, a reproductive health NGO, said: 'Getting abortion law reform right will take time, and we want to make sure we do that in a way that takes into account expert opinion, takes into account women's voices [and] human rights groups.' But, McCudden said: 'The women who are being investigated and facing prosecution and jail can't afford to wait.' And parliament's latest vote means that now there will be no more Carla Fosters, or Nicola Packers.
Spectator
3 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
MPs have opened the door to infanticide
Well, it's hello to prenatal infanticide now that Tonia Antoniazzi's amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill has passed the Commons after all of two hours' debate with 379 MPs voting in favour. Can we get our heads round what that means? Nothing a woman does in relation to her own pregnancy can make her liable to prosecution. At the same age of gestation when premature babies are admitted to neonatal wards with a very good chance of survival, less fortunate foetuses can be killed with impunity by their own mothers. So anyone like Carla Foster, who aborted her baby Lily at 32 weeks' gestation, will now get off free. There are, in other words, no sanctions for those who kill a foetus at any time right up to birth, so long as it's your own foetus you're killing. Are we meant to think that women in these situations are always desperate, never motivated by malice, never out for revenge, never callous or cruel or casual about unborn life? Are we, in short, denying women moral responsibility for their actions? Are we meant to think that women in these situations are always desperate, never motivated by malice, never out for revenge, never callous or cruel or casual about unborn life? Are we, in short, denying women moral responsibility for their actions? Looks like it to me. Can we remind ourselves of the main reason we're in this position? It's a Covid thing, obviously. Prior to the pandemic, women had to turn up to a clinic or surgery to obtain abortifacients and there it was possible for a reasonably experienced midwife or nurse to assess the stage of gestation – if you were over six months' pregnant, it'd be obvious, probably at a glance. But when Covid meant travelling to clinics was tricky, the Conservative government allowed for abortion pills to be prescribed remotely and sent by post. It's just a matter of the woman's word about how far advanced the pregnancy is; no one can check. And that's how Carla Foster got her pills; she didn't tell the truth about the stage of gestation she was at. The reintroduction of in-person appointments would have done away with the main way of procuring the abortifacients for this dangerous procedure – and that was the gist of another amendment by the Tory Caroline Johnson, but the same number of MPs who voted for impunity for killing viable foetuses voted against that one. Let's also remind ourselves how abortion pills work: the first is a progesterone blocker, which breaks down the lining of the uterus to kill the foetus; the second induces labour. So if the foetus is lucky enough to survive the first pill, it could be born alive thanks to the second. What are the chances it might be rushed to a neonatal ward? Nil, wouldn't you say? And let's not deceive ourselves about the distress of the foetus in these circumstances. You can get foetal stress responses earlier than 24 weeks (one reason why the abortion time limit should be pushed back); when surgery is performed on wanted foetuses between 20-26 weeks' gestation they are routinely given the benefit of pain relief. The foetus dying in the womb when abortifacients intended for use up to ten weeks' gestation are used at six months will suffer… there is no avoiding that reality. What gets me about all this is not just the infantilising of women, who are moral agents in all this (unless they're being coerced, which is certainly a possibility in this unscrutinised, unchallengeable situation); it's the cognitive dissonance. It's the case in every abortion that a foetus who in one scenario gets a lovely picture taken of its little fingers and toes at the 12-week ultrasound, can in another, be done away with in the course of 'abortion healthcare'. But it's the same entity. A foetus doesn't become human just because it's wanted, you know; it is what it is, a prenatal human being. It doesn't spring into being as a baby because that's what its mother calls it. And if that's true of the foetus in the first trimester – the average cut off point for most legal abortions in Europe – it's even more obviously the case for the foetus from six to nine months' gestation. If it looks like a baby, reacts like a baby, feels pain like a baby, then you know, it might be worth considering the possibility that it is a baby, just one that hasn't had the chance to be born. It's sentient all right, and viable given proper care. But somehow the MPs who blithely signed away the right to protection under the law for these unfortunates can't see that the mother is not the only life in the balance here. And giving impunity for women who terminate late term pregnancies can only make this grisly scenario more likely. What's needed in fact, is for a tightening of the abortion laws, not making them meaningless. It's legal to abort up to six months' gestation…which is ridiculous given, as mentioned earlier, foetal rates of survival in neonatal wards. I'd at least halve it to 12 weeks with only medical emergencies justifying later abortions. As for Tonia's insistence that the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 – exceptions to which were made in the 1967 abortion act – is being 'used against vulnerable women and girls', well, it covers all sorts of offences, including grievous bodily harm, and there's no sign of that going out of fashion. My own response to this shaming, repugnant development would be to scrutinise the list of the MPs who voted for this grisly amendment, and if they include your constituency MP, I'd say vote for anyone, literally anyone, else at the next election.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Health
- Sydney Morning Herald
British parliament votes to end ‘cruel' abortion prosecutions for women
In 2023, Carla Foster received a 28-month prison sentence after she admitted taking abortion pills to induce a miscarriage during the initial COVID lockdown in 2020, when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant. She was released after just one month in custody following a successful appeal. Another case involved Nicola Packer, who was charged after taking the medications mifepristone and misoprostol at about 26 weeks of pregnancy. She denied knowing that she was more than 10 weeks pregnant and was acquitted by a jury. The reform does not extend to medical professionals or anyone else involved in abortions performed outside existing legal frameworks. Nor does it alter the clinical requirements of the 1967 Act, which permits abortions up to 24 weeks with authorisation from two doctors, and after that point only under limited and exceptional circumstances. Not all within the government backed the change. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood opposed the amendment, warning of risks it might introduce. 'I am deeply concerned to see these measures being progressed in the name of women's rights, when the potential physical and mental impacts on women would be so devastating,' she wrote to constituents. 'I oppose extending abortions up until the point of birth beyond the exemptions that currently exist, as doing so would not only be unnecessary but dangerous.' Antoniazzi made clear the measure would not affect healthcare provisions: the clause 'would not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting', she said, reiterating that the current time limits and clinical conditions would remain. The UK vote lands at a moment of flux in abortion access across Europe, where legal protections are often undermined by logistical or cultural barriers. Despite most EU countries allowing abortion under certain conditions, many women — an estimated 4500 in 2022 — still travel abroad to access care. Loading The Netherlands received 2762 women from Germany, Poland, Belgium, France, and Ireland in 2022 alone. Spain recorded about 1500 cross-border abortion cases in the same year. Hundreds more travelled to the UK for the same reason. Notably, only two EU member states – Malta and Poland – impose near-total bans. But restrictive time limits, a lack of providers and religious or cultural resistance elsewhere mean that abortion, while legal on paper, is inaccessible in practice. Women in France, Italy, and Croatia, for example, often struggle to access care due to 'conscientious objectors' – doctors who refuse to perform abortions. In some Italian regions, up to 90 per cent of physicians decline to carry out the procedure. Even in France, one-third of the UK-based Abortion Support Network's clients are French, many from rural areas without clinics. A recent survey found the average delay between discovering a pregnancy and accessing an abortion was four weeks – often because of waiting periods, lack of information, or difficulty in securing funds and time off work. A citizen-led initiative titled My Voice, My Choice has gathered more than a million signatures calling on the EU to fund abortion access across borders. But progress has been slow. The EU's health commissioner said the bloc 'stands ready to support member states,' but reiterated that abortion remains a matter of national jurisdiction.
The Age
3 days ago
- Health
- The Age
UK Parliament votes to end ‘cruel' abortion prosecutions for women
In 2023, Carla Foster received a 28-month prison sentence after she admitted taking abortion pills to induce a miscarriage during the initial COVID lockdown in 2020, when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant. She was released after just one month in custody following a successful appeal. Another case involved Nicola Packer, who was charged after taking the medications mifepristone and misoprostol at about 26 weeks of pregnancy. She denied knowing that she was more than 10 weeks pregnant and was acquitted by a jury. The reform does not extend to medical professionals or anyone else involved in abortions performed outside existing legal frameworks. Nor does it alter the clinical requirements of the 1967 Act, which permits abortions up to 24 weeks with authorisation from two doctors, and after that point only under limited and exceptional circumstances. Not all within the government backed the change. Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood opposed the amendment, warning of risks it might introduce. 'I am deeply concerned to see these measures being progressed in the name of women's rights, when the potential physical and mental impacts on women would be so devastating,' she wrote to constituents. 'I oppose extending abortions up until the point of birth beyond the exemptions that currently exist, as doing so would not only be unnecessary but dangerous.' Antoniazzi made clear the measure would not affect healthcare provisions: the clause 'would not change any law regarding the provision of abortion services within a healthcare setting', she said, reiterating that the current time limits and clinical conditions would remain. The UK vote lands at a moment of flux in abortion access across Europe, where legal protections are often undermined by logistical or cultural barriers. Despite most EU countries allowing abortion under certain conditions, many women — an estimated 4500 in 2022 — still travel abroad to access care. Loading The Netherlands received 2762 women from Germany, Poland, Belgium, France, and Ireland in 2022 alone. Spain recorded about 1500 cross-border abortion cases in the same year. Hundreds more travelled to the UK for the same reason. Notably, only two EU member states – Malta and Poland – impose near-total bans. But restrictive time limits, a lack of providers and religious or cultural resistance elsewhere mean that abortion, while legal on paper, is inaccessible in practice. Women in France, Italy, and Croatia, for example, often struggle to access care due to 'conscientious objectors' – doctors who refuse to perform abortions. In some Italian regions, up to 90 per cent of physicians decline to carry out the procedure. Even in France, one-third of the UK-based Abortion Support Network's clients are French, many from rural areas without clinics. A recent survey found the average delay between discovering a pregnancy and accessing an abortion was four weeks – often because of waiting periods, lack of information, or difficulty in securing funds and time off work. A citizen-led initiative titled My Voice, My Choice has gathered more than a million signatures calling on the EU to fund abortion access across borders. But progress has been slow. The EU's health commissioner said the bloc 'stands ready to support member states,' but reiterated that abortion remains a matter of national jurisdiction.
