Woman not guilty’ of illegal home abortion in lockdown

Campaigners say case shows how outdated current laws are

- TARA COBHAM

A woman has been cleared of carrying out an illegal abortion during Covid lockdown.

Nicola Packer, 45, took abortion medicine at home in November 2020 and later took the foetus to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in a backpack, her trial at Isleworth Crown Court heard.

The 45-year-old cried and wiped her eyes with a tissue after she was acquitted of the charge of “unlawfully administering to herself a poison or other noxious thing” with the “intent to procure a miscarriage” at the southwest London court yesterday.

Ms Packer’s best friend, Helle Tumbridge, said she was “persecuted” for a “tragic accident” as she joined calls from MPs, royal colleges and abortion providers for reform to abortion law.

“Nikki and I have spoken about [abortion law reforms] a lot, and we both said that we really believe it, until the law has changed and abortion is decriminalised, then women are going to remain second-class citizens in this country,” Ms Tumbridge said.

Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, who went to court to support Ms Packer during the trial, branded the four-and-a-half-year investigation “cruel and unnecessary” as she urged reform of the law.

“The true injustice here is the years of her life stolen by a law written decades before women had the vote, for a ‘crime’ which doesn’t even apply in two nations of the United Kingdom,” she said. “Nicola’s experience, in her own words, includes being taken from her hospital bed to a police cell, denied timely access to essential medical care, and spending every penny she had on lawyers defending her case.”

The case will have been a “shocking wake-up call to many that women are still being investigated and prosecuted for having an abortion today in this country”, said another Labour MP, Stella Creasy, calling for a change to the law so that “the right to choose is a human right”.