Woman Who Was Desperate Enough To Abort Her Full Term Baby Gets A Less Harsh Sentence

A mother of two from the UK was seemingly so desperate to not be pregnant that she reportedly ended the pregnancy herself a week within her due date. Police have determined that the married mother suffers from no mental disorders, but she does have a fraught history surrounding this particular pregnancy as well as others. Perhaps that’s why her sentence was ultimately shortened from eight years to three and a half.

Sarah Catt, aged 36, had been having an affair with a work colleague for seven years at the time that she was pregnant. She apparently ordered drugs off the internet to induce her labor at around the 40 week mark. She maintains that the boy was a stillbirth and that she buried his body. She has yet to reveal to authorities the location of said burial.

Sarah, who was reportedly sobbing during her hearing, pleaded guilty to procuring the drugs specifically with the intention to miscarry. She has no criminal past and came back from a psychiatric report clean. Nevertheless, her circumstances and relationship to the pregnancy are troublesome:

Lady Justice Rafferty said that Catt’s complicated obstetric history, which involved adoption, seeking termination and concealment of pregnancy, threw up a “potential for disturbance, personal misery and long lasting difficulty”.

A history that goes all the way back to the late 1990s, according to earlier reports:

The defendant gave a child up for adoption in 1999, the court was told.

She later had a termination with the agreement of her husband, tried to terminate another pregnancy but missed the legal limit and concealed another pregnancy from her husband before the child’s birth.

Sarah’s husband reportedly wants to stick it out with his wife, penning a letter that exhibited “remarkable restraint, dignity and loyalty,” according to Lady Justice Rafferty. He hopes that they can repair their marriage and stay together with their two young kids.

Sarah’s original sentence was described as “manifestly excessive” despite how difficult it was to appropriately sentence her. But it seems as though she needs a lot more than jail time.

(photo: Mariusz Szczygiel / Shutterstock)