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Pair sentenced for buying pills to induce miscarriage
The Guardian
|December 19, 2024
A man and woman who were accused of buying pills to induce an illegal abortion have been sentenced to community orders.
Sophie Harvey, 25, had previously stood trial accused of procuring her own miscarriage when she was 19.
Prosecutors had alleged she took the medication after learning she was at 28 weeks and five days gestation - meaning she could not get a legal abortion in England as she was beyond the 24-week cutoff.
Harvey and her boyfriend, Elliot Benham, 25, always accepted they had bought abortion pills online. But Harvey insisted she had never taken them and had instead given birth to a stillborn child in the bathroom of her home in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, in September 2018.
The couple had stood trial at Gloucester crown court in May of this year, but the jury was discharged following an application by their lawyers who cited inaccurate reports of the proceedings by the BBC.
This story is from the December 19, 2024 edition of The Guardian.
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