The horrific case of a British woman who bought abortion pills through the mail and used them to abort her nearly full-term unborn daughter has reinvigorated the public abortion debate in England.
Earlier this month, Carla Foster, 45, of Staffordshire, England, received a reduced jail sentence after she admitted to lying about how far along she was in her pregnancy when she bought the abortion pills. Foster claimed to be about seven weeks pregnant, but she really was about 33 weeks pregnant in 2020 when she took the abortion pills and killed her eight-month unborn daughter Lily.
Abortions are legal up to 24 weeks in England and later in certain circumstances. The pro-abortion movement is using Foster’s case to call for legalizing abortion on demand up to birth.
But Dr. Calum Miller, a medical doctor, ethicist and philosophy teacher at the University of Oxford, said their strategy seems to be backfiring.
“… the average person in the UK was horrified to hear that an abortion took place at 8 months—and not only do most people think it should be illegal, most people actually appeared to support a jail sentence for Carla Foster,” Miller told author Jonathon Van Maren in an interview at The European Conservative.
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Miller said callers into radio programs and even a number of news hosts have recognized that the abortion industry is partially to blame for sending the abortion pills to Foster without confirming how far along she was in her pregnancy.
Within the past three years, England and the United States began allowing abortion drugs to be sold through the mail. Until now, pregnant women had to see a doctor in person for a check-up and ultrasound before being prescribed the abortion drugs, and that remains the standard practice in most countries where abortion pills are legal.
“… abortion providers have been recklessly and dangerously sending out abortion pills in the mail without properly verifying women’s gestational age, thus subjecting women not only to serious medical risks but even to serious legal risks as well,” Miller told Van Maren. “Of course, the abortion providers don’t care too much because it’s the women who will be facing jail sentences, not them.”
In the Fosters’ case and others, the pro-abortion movement tries to draw the public’s attention away from the baby and solely on the mother who was punished. But Miller said many people realize that these situations involved two valuable people: a mother and her child.
Miller said the case also exposes a common pro-abortion lie about late-term abortions. He said Lily Foster was “very clearly not [aborted] for any medical reasons, nor because the child had any disability.”
“This is an inconvenient fact for those who say that late-term abortions only ever take place for those sorts of reasons—it’s simply not true,” he continued. “Lily Foster was about 8 months old, so if she were born at that very moment she would almost certainly have survived. This was a fully developed baby. Babies much younger have been born and survived outside of the womb. She could have felt pain, all her bodily organs were there.”
Many have called for compassion for Lily’s mother, who also has three born children and struggles with mental health problems. Earlier this month, Judge Victoria Sharp emphasized “compassion, not punishment,” when she reduced Foster’s sentence to 14 months suspended and 50 days of community service.
Responding, Miller said the word “compassion” has been thrown around a lot regarding the Fosters’ case “without any real explanation of what that means or why we should have it.”
True compassion does not mean ignoring the evil that she committed, but it does mean offering forgiveness and healing to Foster if she is remorseful, he said.
“She says she was plagued by flashbacks of her dead baby’s face and apparently showed significant remorse,” Miller said. “… at the same time, we have to feel compassion for baby Lily, who was slaughtered and who the law counts as close to nothing. We have a lot of work still to do.”
Many pro-life organizations offer post-abortion counseling and other support services to help mothers and fathers of aborted babies. These programs recognize that healing begins with recognizing that unborn babies are valuable and killing them is wrong, but parents can learn to forgive themselves, grieve and heal from the death of their child.
