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Sentencing mothers & the rights of the child

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20 October 2023 / Rona Epstein , Dr Hugh Williams
Issue: 8045 / Categories: Features , Criminal
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Rona Epstein & Hugh Williams report on the background & history of sentencing a parent of dependent children
  • Carla Foster was sent to prison for obtaining a miscarriage, but the Court of Appeal suspended the sentence.
  • Covers circumstances where a sentence should be suspended, the rights of the child when sentencing parents, and what advocates, magistrates and judges should know.

On 12 June 2023, Carla Foster was sentenced by Mr Justice Pepperall to an immediate term of 28 months’ imprisonment for procuring an abortion, contrary to the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 (s 58). Foster had pleaded guilty to this charge as an alternative to an original charge of child destruction. The abortion took place in May 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when she was 32 to 34 weeks’ pregnant, past the 24-week point where the abortion would have been legal. Foster’s sentence was appealed, coming before the Court of Appeal Criminal Division before Dame Victoria Sharp, Lord Justice Holdroyde and

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