A woman has been found not guilty of having an illegal abortion during the second coronavirus lockdown.
Nicola Packer, 45, cried as she was acquitted of “unlawfully administering to herself a poison or other noxious thing” with the “intent to procure a miscarriage” at Isleworth Crown Court in southwest London.
Ms Packer took abortion medication at home in November 2020. She brought the foetus to a London hospital in a backpack the next day, having passed it in a toilet, the court heard.
Jurors were told Ms Packer, then 41, took prescribed medications mifepristone and misoprostol when she was around 26 weeks pregnant. The legal limit for taking medication at home for an abortion is 10 weeks.
Prosecutors claimed Ms Packer knew she was more than 10 weeks pregnant, which she denied. Jurors rejected the prosecution’s case and found the 45-year-old not guilty.
She was supported by five people in the public gallery, who hugged each other after the verdict was delivered.
During her trial, Ms Packer spoke of her “surprise” and “shock” at being pregnant – before breaking down in tears as she told the jury: “If I had known I was that far along I wouldn’t have done it.”
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“I wouldn’t have put the baby or myself through it,” she added.
The court heard Ms Packer did not find out she was pregnant until taking a test on 2 November 2020, four days before she took the abortion medication.
She spent the night of 7 November in hospital, having taken the foetus to the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, and was arrested by police the following day.
Judge Martin Edmunds thanked the jurors for their attention in the case after the verdict was delivered.
He added: “It is the prosecution, the CPS, who make decisions about whether to pursue criminal cases. They do so through guidelines which they have to apply… one of which is the public interest.”
Case leads to calls for abortion law reform
The case has sparked calls for reform of abortion laws in England and Wales, with the British Pregnancy Advisory Service saying prosecuting women for abortions is “never in the public interest”.
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Katie Saxon, chief strategic communications officer, said: “In recent years, we have seen record numbers of women investigated for suspected illegal abortions.
“Women are being arrested straight from the hospital ward, their homes searched, and their children taken away. This cannot continue.”
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Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, who supported Ms Packer in court during the trial, said it is “completely unacceptable” the 45-year-old was “forced to endure the indignity and turmoil of a trial”.
“The true injustice here is the years of her life stolen by a law written decades before women had the vote, for a ‘crime’ which doesn’t even apply in two nations of the United Kingdom,” she said.
“This is utterly deplorable, and it is not justice. I do not see how this law can be defended any longer.”
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A government spokesperson said any changes to abortion laws are “a matter of conscience for parliamentarians rather than the government”.
They added: “We recognise that this is an extremely sensitive issue, and there are strongly held views on all sides of the discussion. That is why, by longstanding convention, any change to the law in this area would be a matter of conscience for parliamentarians rather than the government.
“Decisions to prosecute, within existing legislation, are for the CPS and are incredibly rare.”
