Last July we told you about Sarah Catt, the British mother of two who had just pleaded guilty to administering poison to her unborn baby in the last week of her pregnancy in 2010 with the intention of ‘causing a miscarriage’. Today she was jailed for eight years for the abortion, which took place at 39 weeks.
Catt “bought a drug used to terminate a pregnancy or induce labour over the internet from a company in Mumbai, India, in May 2010,” according to SkyNews. “The drug was delivered to her home address when she was 38 weeks pregnant and she is believed to have taken it towards the end of May 2010 when she was nearly 40 weeks pregnant.”
Abortions are banned in Britain after 24 weeks unless the woman’s life is at risk or the very elastic criteria of a substantial risk that the child would suffer serious physical or mental handicap are met. None of this applied in Catt’s case.
Sentencing Catt, who reportedly showed no emotion, Mr Justice Cooke said: “The critical element of your offence is that you made a deliberate choice, in full knowledge of the due date of your child, to terminate the pregnancy close to, if not at, term, in full knowledge that termination after 24 weeks was unlawful, and in full knowledge that the birth of your child was imminent.
“What you have done is to end the life of a child who was capable of being born alive by inducing a birth or a miscarriage,” the judge continued. “What you have done is to deprive an apparently healthy child, vulnerable and defenceless, of the life it was about to begin,” SkyNews reported.
The judge added pointedly that if the baby had been born a few days later and she had then killed him, Catt would have been charged with murder.
After her arrest in September 2010, Catt initially claimed to have had an abortion at a Marie Stopes clinic in March. However, an analysis of her computer showed that she had obtained a drug over the internet to induce a ‘miscarriage’, as most press reports described the near-full-term abortion. She then claimed the baby boy was stillborn and that she buried his body, but no evidence of the child was ever found.