Yesterday a woman received a 28 month sentence, with over a year in custody, for using abortion pills to end her pregnancy. Humanists UK has reacted with shock and horror, and calls for immediate action to reform abortion law in England and Wales.
Carla Foster, a mother of three, will spend 14 months in custody and a further 14 months on licence, as she took abortion bills outside the legal limit using pills at home during the pandemic. Ms Foster was initially charged with child destruction which she denied and later pled guilty to an offence under a Victorian law, the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act.
And now, this woman, a mother to three children who are still alive (one of whom is disabled) is going to be incarcerated for over a year. For what purpose? The woman is clearly not a danger to society, it’s not like she’s going to be a repeat offender of this crime. Prison as a form of punishment is inhumane and does not deter crime - this is well known. As for rehabilitation, what here would need to be rehabilitated?
This entire case is disgusting and it will hugely harm the welfare of her and her children for entirely no good reason, has cost the taxpayer who knows how much, has wasted the courts time, and all of this just to make an entirely needless point.
Totally agree that it’s the wrong punishment. It’s not as if she would go around getting further abortions unless they locked her up.
Absolutely - and I’d go further, too. All the studies and research shows that punitive measures do nothing to deter crime, so the question has to be asked - from a logical standpoint, why punish her at all? I agree it is absolutely tragic that a baby suffered due to her actions but the judge himself said that she seemed extremely remorseful and the poor woman has already suffered so much. Who does it benefit to punish her further? Our courts are supposed to be part of our so-called “justice system” - if this act of callous, senseless, needless violence is “justice” then the world really should perish.