UK woman gets 8 years for at-home abortion

A British woman who performed a do-it-yourself abortion when she was 30 weeks pregnant was been sentenced to eight years in prison. Sarah Catt, 35, of Sherburn-in-Elmet, West Yorkshire, used a drug she obtained online to induce labor after being told it was too late for her to have an abortion, The Daily Telegraph reported. A judge told Catt the crime was more serious than manslaughter but less serious than murder. "What you did was end the life of a child that was capable of being born alive by inducing birth or miscarriage," Mr. Justice Cooke said at Catt's sentencing Monday in Leeds Crown Court. "What you have done is rob an apparently healthy child, vulnerable and defenseless, of the life which he was about to commence." Catt had told police she had given birth to a son who was born dead. She said she buried the body but has not revealed the location. The father of the child was apparently a man with whom Catt, a married mother of two, was having an extramarital affair.