Nicola Packer's traumatic experience following a rare abortion complication reveals deep flaws in the legal and healthcare systems. After she delivered a foetus at home, instead of receiving compassion, Packer was treated as a criminal. The police pursued charges against her for nearly five years, despite evidence suggesting she may have qualified for a legal abortion. Packer's ordeal underscores how laws have historically framed women as suspects, leading to incentivized persecution rather than empathetic care, and raises ongoing concerns about how similar cases are handled in the current legal landscape.
As Nicola Packer lay down in shock having just delivered a foetus at home, she had no idea that her life was about to be torn apart. She had suffered a rare complication in her abortion treatment, but what followed would be far more traumatic and unexpected.
Had it not been a time of Covid-19 lockdown and had Packer had a scan, it seems reasonably likely that this would have shown a pregnancy of less than 24 weeks, meaning she could have had a legal, uneventful abortion.
The problem is not with callous organisations or individuals, it is that our laws directed and encouraged those actions. It is perhaps not surprising that the law promotes persecution over compassion.
Every agency she needed turned against her, treating her not as a victim but as a criminal. Compassion was replaced by cruelty.
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