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Woman jailed for taking drugs to abort baby within week of expected birth
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- Parent Category: Africa and The World
- Category: Law & Justice
- Created on Monday, 17 September 2012 00:00
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Woman jailed for taking drugs to abort baby within week of expected birth
Mother of two, who believed child was result of affair, convicted of administering poison with intent to cause miscarriage
Martin Wainwright
A woman who bought drugs on the internet in order to abort her own baby within a week of his expected birth has been jailed for eight years for administering poison with intent to cause a miscarriage.Sarah Catt, 35, and a married mother of two, believed the child was the result of a seven-year affair and had kept her pregnancy secret from her "highly supportive" husband.
She carried on with an outwardly normal life, including a holiday in France, while secretly buying drugs from India, having a stillborn child and disposing of his body. She was told by a judge at Leeds crown court that she had "robbed an apparently healthy child, vulnerable and defenceless, of the life which he was about to commence".
The court heard Catt had failed to arrange an abortion before the legal limit of 24 weeks, and so scoured the internet with search terms such as "where can I get an illegal abortion?" and "inducing an abortion at 30 weeks". Mr Justice Cooke told her that her crime, which saw the drugs flown from Mumbai and delivered to her home at Sherburn-in-Elmet, ranked between manslaughter and murder on the criminal scale.
He said: "The child in the womb was so near to birth that in my judgment all right-thinking people would think this offence more serious than unintentional manslaughter. What you did was end the life of a child that was capable of being born alive, by inducing birth or miscarriage."Had Catt delayed only a few days more and killed the baby after birth, the charge would have been murder.
The court was told by Frances Oldham QC in mitigation that Catt had been a "supportive and loving mother" to the two children she has with her husband and would never forgive herself for the pain she had inflicted on her family. But she had a troubled history of conception and childbirth, giving a child up for adoption in 1999, having an earlier termination with her husband's agreement, trying to terminate a further pregnancy but missing the legal limit, and concealing another pregnancy from her husband before the child's birth.
She became pregnant again in 2009 and told the man she was having an affair with, before breaking things off with him and then re-starting the liaison. She is believed to have taken the drugs from India towards the end of May when she was nearly 40 weeks pregnant.
Following suspicions about the pregnancy, she was arrested in September 2010 and told police at several interviews over the next year that she had secured a legal abortion at a clinic. She finally admitted the truth earlier this year, telling a psychiatrist that she had delivered the stillborn baby herself while her husband was away, and buried it. She would not say where, and no trace of the child has been found.
The judge told her at the hour-long hearing: "The critical element of your offending is the deliberate choice made by you, in full knowledge of the due date of your child, to terminate the pregnancy at somewhere close to term, if not actually at term, with the full knowledge that termination after week 24 was unlawful and in full knowledge your child's birth was imminent."
Oldham said Catt had asked her to tell her husband and children that she was sorry and was aware that the crime was "a burden that she will bear for the rest of her life". But Catt showed no outward emotion during the hearing and she was described by police afterwards as "cold and calculating".
Chief inspector Kerrin Smith said: "One of the difficulties faced by the investigation team was convincing other parties in the criminal justice system that a woman could conceal a full-term pregnancy from all around her, even her husband, and that she could give birth and then carry on everyday activities. Catt's previous history with regard to her pregnancies, and in her admissions to the police, show that she is more than capable of being extremely deceitful in her actions.
"She has proved to be cold and calculating and has shown no remorse or given an explanation for what she did, lying to the police, health professionals and her family throughout the investigation. I only hope that now she has been sentenced and has time to reflect on her actions, that she will reveal where the body of her baby is, so that we can ensure a compassionate conclusion to this very sad investigation."
Source: The Guardian UK
