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A woman has been convicted after she pretended to be pregnant to obtain abortion pills, which were sent to her by the UK’s largest abortion provider BPAS after a phone consultation. She then handed the pills to her ‘lover’, who said he was planning to trick his girlfriend into taking them.
Georgia Day has been given a 12-month suspended prison sentence after she was found guilty of conspiring to procure the physical means to induce an abortion [procure a miscarriage].
The 23-year-old had contacted BPAS and lied about being pregnant in a follow-up phone consultation in order to obtain pills used to procure an early-stage medical abortion.
Day had conspired with her ‘lover’, with whom she was having an affair, to obtain the pills so that he might trick his pregnant girlfriend into taking them.
He offered friends thousands of pounds for them to get abortion pills that he could give to his girlfriend without her knowledge.
The man and his girlfriend had initially planned to start a family together but he changed his mind after his girlfriend had become pregnant and so he asked her to get an abortion. When she refused, the man asked his female friends to help him get hold of abortion pills.
While the man in question was found not guilty, Day admitted that she had procured abortion pills for him.
The prosecutor, Julia King, told Derby Crown Court that the man had offered friends thousands of pounds for them to get abortion pills that he could give to his girlfriend without her knowledge. Day, of Wingerworth in Derbyshire, offered to do it for free.
In Day’s internet history, the Court found searches for “giving abortion pills to someone else”, “man laced pregnant wife’s pills with abortion pills” and “size of baby at four weeks”, as well as searches on whether it was illegal to give someone abortion pills without their knowledge.
However, their plan fell apart when the pregnant woman discovered a box of abortion pills under her bed. She did not take them and her healthy baby was born later in 2020.
A “terrible mistake”
Lauren Fisher, defending, said:
This mistake was made perhaps out of naivety or without proper consideration of the consequences, not only for the [pregnant woman] but for Miss Day herself.
But there is significant remorse now by her since this happened, shown primarily by her guilty plea. She did not know [the pregnant woman]; she was in a relationship of sorts with [the man].
She initially said no, but for reasons that she perhaps cannot now fathom, decided to obtain the pills and give them to him. It is something that will remain with her for the rest of her life.
It was a terrible mistake.
“Your acts were very foolish”
On handing Day a suspended sentence, Recorder Dean Crowe said:
The Crown does assert that Miss Day was a party to obtaining the abortion tablets.
It would seem you found some common ground [with the man]. I accept that there was some genuine affection between you. It was perhaps this affection that led you to foolishly agree to do what you did.
You are very lucky. Your acts were very foolish, but I accept that they are not ones you are likely to repeat in the future.
‘DIY’ home abortions, or “pills-by-post”, were initially introduced as part of the [UK] government’s pandemic response and have been legally available since March 2020. While they were introduced as a temporary measure that was supposed to expire in August of this year, an amendment by Baroness Sugg ensured they became a permanent feature of the law.
Catherine Robinson, Right To Life UK spokesperson, said:
Abortion provider BPAS ran a very large campaign to put pressure on parliament to allow them to provide DIY home abortions without a woman having an in-person consultation. Now this same organisation has been caught sending out abortion pills to a woman who was planning on using them to help her lover trick his girlfriend into aborting her baby without her knowledge.
This is another example of abortion providers putting their own bottom lines ahead of the health and safety of women. Under the previous abortion process, this woman would have had to take the first abortion pill in person at a clinic and she would have not been able to obtain these pills to use them in this way. Sadly BPAS lobbied to have this safeguard removed, which likely increased the margins they make on each abortion and has resulted in this awful incident occurring.
It is good to see the justice system working in this case, but this particular issue is something that legislators could and should have foreseen when they made DIY abortions available permanently.
In a DIY abortion, a woman seeking an abortion never has to see a medical professional in a face-to-face consultation and need not undergo any physical examination at all. Not only can this lead to complications and misjudging the gestation of the baby, but it leaves open the possibility of nefarious practices like obtaining abortion pills under false pretences to be given to a third party without their knowledge. This is precisely what happened in this case and the mechanism for the administration of DIY abortions has no way to prevent this from happening.
The more concerning aspect of this case is that it leaves open the question of how often this has happened and is happening but is never detected. If the pregnant woman had never found the abortion pills, she might have been administered the abortion pills without her knowledge or consent, have lost her baby and might never know what her boyfriend had done. This prospect is as frightening as it is deeply unjust.
