A woman who was sentenced to more than two years in prison for obtaining drugs to have an abortion after the legal cut-off will be released from jail after winning an appeal against her sentence.
Carla Foster, 45, was sentenced to 28 months in prison last month, after procuring drugs to terminate her pregnancy at 32 to 34 weeks during the pandemic.
The case sparked a major backlash among abortion providers, MPs, campaigners and members of the public who argued it was not in the public interest to jail the mother-of-three and abortion must be urgently decriminalised.
The Court of Appeal has now reduced her sentence to 14 months as well as ruling it should be suspended.
Sitting with two other judges, Dame Victoria Sharp said: “This is a very sad case… It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment”.
Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court previously heard Foster, who already had three children before she became pregnant again in 2019, had lied to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) during a telephone consultation about how far along her pregnancy was so she could obtain the pills.
Foster was initially charged with child destruction and pleaded not guilty, before pleading guilty to a different charge of administering drugs or using instruments to procure an abortion.
During the sentencing hearing, the court heard Foster, who had three sons before becoming pregnant again in 2019, did not see a doctor about her pregnancy due to being “embarrassed” and not realising how far along she was.
Justice Pepperall said Foster felt “very deep and genuine remorse”, was “racked with guilt” and still had nightmares over her actions.
It comes after The Independent recently reported on figures that show dozens of women suspected of having illegal abortions have faced criminal investigations from the police in recent years.
Information obtained under freedom of information (FOI) laws reveal at least 36 women endured criminal investigations after being accused of having illegal abortions from April 2014 to December 2021.
The data, acquired by National World and based on responses from 35 police forces, looked at recorded crimes for the two charges of procuring an illegal abortion and the intentional destruction of a viable unborn child.
Dr Jonathon Lord, who represented medical organisations in the case, told The Independent the sentencing of the mother-of-three “brought back the horrors of the 1960s”.
The consultant NHS gynaecologist at the Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust added: “The really big fear is that we know the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are sitting on lots more cases – waiting to see whether this one would be jailed and thereby prove a public interest in prosecuting.
“So we now expect anything between six to 40 proceeding – it is so hard to know numbers as it’s all so secretive. We don’t know if these cases will be charged. Another issue is that patients are told to speak to nobody. So one woman had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for over six months before we heard she’d had a premature delivery that arose suspicion.”
He noted she had been imprisoned under a law from 1861 – “an era when public hangings drew large crowds and 67 years before women were able to vote”.
Additional reporting by wires
