Catherine Fookes
Main Page: Catherine Fookes (Labour - Monmouthshire)Department Debates - View all Catherine Fookes's debates with the Ministry of Justice
Decriminalising Abortion
Catherine Fookes Excerpts(4 days, 22 hours ago)
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Tony Vaughan
My understanding is that the case has been disposed of. Ms Packer was found not guilty of those charges last month, I believe.
Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)
Does my hon. and learned Friend agree that the best way of keeping women’s protections to have an abortion and to stop the criminalisation of women, which he has been talking about, is to support new clause 1, which my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi) has tabled, to the Crime and Policing Bill?
Tony Vaughan
I agree, and I will support the new clause.
Ms Packer was in hospital one day, and arrested the next, and it took five years before the courts could dispose of that case. Another case is that of Carla Foster, a mother who was jailed for illegally taking abortion tablets to end her pregnancy during lockdown. She was initially sentenced to 28 months in prison. She was a mother of three who was of exceptionally good character and had suffered from poor mental health. She had quickly admitted to police that she had provided incorrect information during a consultation, and the Court of Appeal reduced the term to 14 months and suspended the sentence. However, by that point, she had already served 35 days in prison and had been denied any communication with her children, one of whom is autistic. In reducing her sentence, the judge said that the case called for “compassion, not punishment”, and that there was “no useful purpose” in keeping her in prison.