‘Cold’ woman who aborted baby near full-term gets eight years

A MARRIED woman who aborted her own baby when he was almost full term in the belief the father was a man with whom she had been having an affair has been jailed for eight years.

Sarah Catt was described by police yesterday as “cold and calculating” after she bought drugs over the internet to induce a miscarriage around a week before her due date.

She never told her husband of the pregnancy and when investigations began she claimed she had undergone a legal abortion at a clinic.

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It was only after her prosecution that she claimed the baby boy had been stillborn and she had buried his body. But Leeds Crown Court heard she has refused to say where and no evidence of the child has ever been found.

Catt, who has two children, had previously had an abortion and another child adopted before she discovered she was pregnant again in 2009, while in the midst of a seven-year affair with a work colleague.

She finished the relationship and planned to terminate the pregnancy in early 2010 but then realised she had missed the legal limit of 24 weeks.

The 35-year-old, from Sherburn-in-Elmet, near Leeds, showed no emotion as she was sentenced yesterday after admitting procuring her own miscarriage.

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Jailing her, Mr Justice Cooke said the seriousness of the crime lay between manslaughter and murder.

“What you did was to end the life of a child that was presumptively capable of being born alive by inducing birth or miscarriage. But for the drugs intentionally taken, there is no reason to believe that you would not have been delivered of a healthy boy.

“At whatever stage life can be said to begin, the child in the womb here was so near to birth that in my judgment all right-thinking people would consider this offence more serious than manslaughter or any offence on the calendar other than murder.”

Mr Justice Cooke said Catt was an intelligent woman who had acted with full knowledge of her due date and of the abortion law.

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He added: “What you have done is rob an apparently healthy child, vulnerable and defenceless, of the life which he was about to commence.”

The court heard she had ordered Misoprostol on April 14, 2010 and it was delivered from Mumbai, India, on May 10. Eleven days later she enquired on the internet what would happen if she took the drug at term.

On May 26 she enquired again on the net how soon the drug would take effect, having taken the previous afternoon off work.

“It is a far inference that you must have taken the drug somewhere around that time,” said the judge.

The day after she went on a family holiday to France.

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“You told the psychiatrist that you acted alone and took the drug whilst your husband was away, delivering the baby induced by the drug at home.”

She also claimed it was a boy who was stillborn. “You said you buried the body but have refused to disclose the location. You delivered the afterbirth and cleaned up the bathroom on your own, telling no one what had taken place.”

Catt further told a probation officer she had explored all the other options available to her but “discounted them”, the judge said, adding: “A person of your intelligence, education and experience would know just how early on, a child’s characteristics and features are seen in the womb and the extent of a child’s development at 38-40 weeks, however inexact the calculation of the due date.”

Simon Waley, prosecuting, said Catt had been booked in for a consultation at a Marie Stopes Clinic on March 16, 2010 but did not attend.

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The previous day she had gone to the Leeds branch of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and an ultrasound scan indicated she was at least 26 weeks pregnant. She then attended hospital for a more accurate scan which indicated she was 29 weeks five days.

When health authorities later contacted her she told them she had undergone an abortion in Manchester and stuck with that story when police inquiries began.

She had given up a child for adoption after falling pregnant at university, only telling her parents on delivery, and had an abortion in 2000 with the agreement of the man who was to become her husband nine years later.

She told her lover she was pregnant last year but later said there was no baby.

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Frances Oldham QC, for Catt, said she was good mother to her two children and would never forgive herself for the impact on the family.

After the case Chief Inspector Kerrin Smith said: “This was an unusual, disturbing and very complicated case. Catt has proved to be cold and calculating and has shown no remorse or given an explanation for what she did, lying to the police, health professionals and her family.”

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