Couple who bought abortion pills online given community orders
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Sophie Harvey and Elliot Benham denied using the pills and said their child had been stillborn. 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 this year, but the jury was discharged by a judge after an application by their lawyers who cited inaccurate reports of the proceedings by the BBC. Harvey described to the court how she was left upset and confused after going into labour at home and wrapped the baby in a towel before placing it into the household waste bin.
Following the collapse of the trial, prosecutors had sought a new trial, and a date had been fixed for February next year. But at a further hearing on Wednesday, a new charge of conspiracy to procure a poison with intent to procure a miscarriage was put to them, which they both admitted. The crown also accepted a plea of endeavouring to conceal the birth of a child.
