Pair plead guilty to illegal abortion

A man and a woman have pleaded guilty to criminal charges relating to the illegal abortion of a baby in 2018.

Elliot Benham, 24, admitted obtaining poison to deliberately trigger a miscarriage, and Sophie Harvey, 24, admitted hiding the birth of a child and disposing of the body.

The news comes in the wake of several cases of women procuring drugs to have an abortion past the legal limit, under controversial home abortion rules.

CARE has warned that "home abortion" rules ushered in during the pandemic that dispensed with in-person consultation have created a dangerous situation.

Women have been able to access medical abortions past the legal limit, and there is less scrutiny, meaning coercion may not be spotted.

Last year, more than 600 medics in the UK called for an end to home abortion rules in a letter to the Prime Minister and Scottish and Welsh First Ministers.

CARE has said:

“There is the heightened danger of women being forced into having an abortion by a coercive partner. It is hard to establish meaningful and informed consent for medical abortion to take place, given the lack of in-person consultation. There is also the very obvious risk of dangerous medical complications occurring outside a medical setting.

“To prevent these harmful outcomes, we should insist upon the highest possible standards of safety. The safeguards that existed for access before the pandemic were there for a reason. The home abortion frameworks brought in during the pandemic are simply incompatible with the level of care that should be expected under normal circumstances."