Govt urged to ban DIY abortions after drugged woman lost 15-week-old baby

A woman was deliberately poisoned with abortion pills to kill her 15-week-old baby, a court has heard.

Stuart Worby has been found guilty of spiking the anonymous woman’s drink in August 2022, which caused a miscarriage just hours later. Nueza Cepeda pleaded guilty to supplying him with the pills, which she obtained following a phone consultation with abortion provider The Gynae Centre.

Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, women had to attend a face-to-face consultation with a medical professional before they could be given abortion pills, at least one of which was then taken in a supervised medical environment. But following a change in the law in 2022, women less than ten weeks pregnant can now procure the pills after a phone or video consultation, with the pills then posted to them.

‘Tragic’

Right to Life UK spokeswoman Catherine Robinson urged the Government to end the current scheme.

She said: “If at-home abortions had not been introduced, Stuart Worby would not have been able to obtain these pills from this abortion provider, and this tragic case would not have happened.”

In a similar case in 2022, senior civil servant Darren Burke was sentenced to over three years in prison for lacing his girlfriend’s orange juice with abortion pills after she refused to have an abortion.

‘Pills by post’

In August, abortion activists called on the Government to scrap the ten-week rule on DIY abortions in England and Wales.

Citing research from Sweden, despite it relating to a vastly different process, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) claimed home abortions are “safe” after twelve weeks’ gestation, and that “unnecessary restrictions” should be lifted.

According to latest figures, there were 252,122 abortions in England and Wales in 2022, of which 61 per cent were chemically induced at home during the first ten weeks of pregnancy.