Donne vulnerabili in Inghilterra continuano ad essere arrestate per sospetti aborti illegali | Aborto

I have lost several pregnancies, including a termination at 22 weeks for medical reasons. Investigating me would have caused nothing but distress.

The issue is that there is no reliable way to tell if someone has unlawfully terminated a pregnancy vs lost the pregnancy. Therefore many of the women being investigated may well have lost the pregnancy entirely naturally. That’s adding an enormous amount of distress to a situation that’s already distressing.

Cryptic pregnancies are rare, but they’re not unheard of and they are going to be overrepresented in these kinds of cases. It is not a crime to have a cryptic pregnancy that ends in pregnancy loss. It’s not necessarily that unusual in cryptic pregnancies either. I’m not aware of any research on the statistics, but logic would dictate that pregnancies without medical care are more likely to end in a loss.

Termination in the UK is freely available for anyone who wants one up to 24 weeks. There is virtually no incentive for someone to illegally terminate their own pregnancy. Why would you purchase suspect pills from the Internet if you can just self refer to the local clinic and get it done for free? The answer is probably if you’re a victim of severe domestic abuse and accessing a legal clinic isn’t an option. In which case, is prosecution in the public interest?

I have been through pregnancy loss including a late term termination. It’s a psychologically and physically brutal experience. It’s not something anyone does if the alternatives aren’t hellish.