A woman has been cleared of illegally terminating a pregnancy, after taking abortion pills during lockdown.
Nicola Packer took the pills at home in November 2020. She had been prescribed mifepristone and misoprostol after a remote consultation.
She later delivered a foetus, which the court heard was estimated to be about 26 weeks in gestation, which she brought with her to Chelsea and Westminster hospital, Isleworth crown court heard.
She was arrested in hospital and later charged with “unlawfully administering to herself a poison or other noxious thing” with the “intent to procure a miscarriage”.
Packer had been prescribed the medication under emergency pandemic legislation – later made permanent – that allows for pills to be dispatched by post after a remote consultation in pregnancies up to 10 weeks.
The prosecution had alleged that she believed she was more than 10 weeks pregnant at the time she took the pills.
But she denied the charges, and was found not guilty by a jury of nine women and three men, who returned a unanimous verdict, after the two-week trial.
“The facts of this case are a tragedy but they are not a crime and Ms Packer is not guilty of this offence,” Fiona Horlick KC, defending Packer, said in her closing speech on Tuesday.
“It is hard to imagine how traumatically awful it must have been for Ms Packer thinking that she would only see blood clots to look into the toilet bowl and see a small but fully formed baby,” she told the jury. “Four and a half years later you can see how she is still utterly traumatised by that.”
Remote prescribing legislation introduced during the pandemic allowed pills to be dispatched by post for pregnancies up to 10 weeks. The normal time limit for abortions in England and Wales is 23 weeks and six days, with no time limits in place if certain criteria are in place, such as a severe foetal anomaly or a risk to the mother’s life.
The prosecution had alleged that Packer had known she was more than 10 weeks pregnant when she took the pills that she received in the post.
Packer, 45, who was supported by five people in the public gallery, cried and wiped her eyes as the verdict was delivered by the foreperson of the jury, which had been deliberating since Wednesday morning. She had been allowed to sit at the back of the court, behind her defence team, rather than in the dock, for most of the trial.
Addressing the court, Judge Edmunds KC said that “one can only hope that if there are cases relating to other events that happened during that very difficult period of Covid” that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) would “balance whether it is in the public interest for those matters to be prosecuted”.
At a previous hearing, before the case went to trial, the judge had asked the CPS to carry out a review into whether continuing with the case was in the public interest.
A CPS spokesperson said: “Following a request from the judge to review the case in view of the length of time which passed since the alleged offending, we acted to carry out a full further review of the case before the decision was taken to continue the prosecution. The judge was informed of our decision.”
The case, which loomed over Packer for almost half a decade and resulted in the most personal details of her life, including medical history, sexual preferences and even intimate photographs, shared in court, has led to renewed calls for abortion to be removed from the criminal statute books.
Katie Saxon, the chief strategic communications officer at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, said: “A woman who sought medical attention after experiencing a traumatic event has had to endure a protracted police investigation and public trial, her private life picked apart by prosecutors and reported in the national press, at a huge emotional and financial cost.
“Prosecuting women for ‘illegal’ abortion is never in the public interest, and no woman should ever have to go through this again.”
Dr Ranee Thakar, the president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: “As a doctor, I am acutely aware of how vital it is that women can access essential healthcare in a safe and supportive environment.
“Restrictive abortion laws in England and Wales nurture an environment of fear, stigmatisation and criminalisation. They needlessly subject women to prolonged investigation, criminal charges, and custodial sentences for ending their own pregnancy.”
She said Packer’s case “shows just how outdated and harmful these laws have become”, adding: “Abortion reform is urgently needed and now is the time for change.”
