Carla Foster, the United Kingdom (UK) woman arrested for an illegal abortion at 32 weeks that killed the child, has been released from jail, and had her sentence reduced to just community service.
In 2020, Foster lied to the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the largest abortion business in the UK, and said she was 10 weeks pregnant so she could receive the abortion pills in the mail. It is believed she was actually 28 weeks pregnant when she received the pills, and after the baby girl, named Lily, was delivered, doctors found that she was actually approximately 32 weeks pregnant. The baby did not breathe at birth.
In the UK, it is illegal to have an abortion past 24 weeks, unless the preborn child has been diagnosed with a disability. After 10 weeks, abortions must be committed in a hospital. Foster was originally sentenced to 28 months, half of which would be served in jail.
To give an idea of how fully developed a child is at 32 weeks gestation, the child pictured in the stock image below is 29 weeks:
Female baby in NICU – 29 Weeks is in isolette / incubator with eye protection covering eyes gets milk fed by syringe / mother
“This case concerns one woman’s tragic and unlawful decision to obtain a late-term abortion,” Justice Edward Pepperall said at the sentencing. “In my judgment your culpability was high … because you knew full well your pregnancy was beyond the limit of 24 weeks, and you deliberately lied to gain access to telemedical services.”
Yet the Court of Appeals has now reduced her sentence, allowing her to be released from jail. She will now have only a 14-months suspended term, meaning she will return to jail if she breaks any of the conditions set by the court.
“This is a very sad case… It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment,” Dame Victoria Sharp said.
Clare Murphy, chief executive for BPAS, celebrated Sharp’s ruling and called for the UK’s abortion laws to be made even more liberal. “The court of appeal has today recognised that this cruel, antiquated law does not reflect the values of society today,” she said. “Now is the time to reform abortion law so that no more women are unjustly criminalised for taking desperate actions at a desperate time in their lives.”
Right to Life UK took the opposite approach, and called for an investigation into how BPAS was able to send abortion pills through the mail so easily without verifying Foster’s information.
“Campaigners, led by BPAS… are using this tragic case to call for the removal of more abortion safeguards and the introduction of abortion up to birth across the United Kingdom,” spokesperson Catherine Robinson said. “At at least 32 weeks or around eight months’ gestation, [the baby] was a fully formed human child. If her mother had been given an in-person appointment by BPAS, she would still be alive.”
