A woman is on trial in the UK for allegedly having an illegal chemical abortion at 26 weeks gestation after obtaining abortifacients from provider Marie Stopes.
Nicola Packer, 41, allegedly had an illegal abortion, and later took the dead baby in a rucksack to a hospital and claimed she had a miscarriage.
The woman is accused of taking abortion drugs at home on 6 November 2020. The next day, she arrived at a London hospital with her dead baby in a rucksack. She was around 26 weeks pregnant at the time, a jury heard at Isleworth Crown Court.
Prosecutor Alexandra Felix KC said Packer arrived at the hospital and told a nurse that she thought she had miscarried at 16 to 18 weeks pregnancy. An autopsy later found that her dead baby was around 26 weeks.
Ms Felix also said that online searches made by the accused suggested that she knew the baby was over ten weeks gestation and past the legal limit for an at-home abortion, which is ten weeks.
Packer had reportedly told midwives that she received abortion pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, from provider Marie Stopes following a telephone consultation.
The prosecution also said that Packer had searched the terms “Is mifesopron[sic] detectable” and “Is the abortion pill detectable UK” online on her phone. She had also searched “If you late miscarry at home what do you do with the fetus” and “Can the father take the miscarried fetus to the hospital to get rid of in the UK”, Ms Felix said.
During the time of the abortion, Packer was living in a threesome with a husband and wife as part of a bondage, dominance and submission (BDSM) relationship, which started when the UK was placed in lockdown in March 2020.
The trial is ongoing.
The pills-by-post scheme, allowing women to obtain and use abortion drugs through the mail up to ten weeks of pregnancy, was introduced during lockdown, and later made permanent.
SPUC has called for MPs to end the scheme after numerous incidents of abortion drugs being obtained illegally, either by women over the legal limit or by other persons intent on using them to induce an abortion, sometimes without the woman’s knowledge.
In one case, Carla Foster was sentenced to 28 months in prison for falsely obtaining abortion drugs past the legal limit, ending the life of her unborn baby when she was 8 months pregnant. She was later released following an appeal.
In another case, Stuart Worby was convicted of administering abortion drugs to his pregnant girlfriend after a friend obtained abortion pills by lying about being pregnant during a telemedicine consultation.
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