Abortion arrest: Recording reveals police concern

A secret recording, leaked to the BBC, reveals a senior police officer had serious concerns over the controversial arrest of a woman who took abortion pills when about 26 weeks pregnant - when she believed the pregnancy was only about six weeks along.

Nicola Packer was arrested in hospital at the height of the Covid pandemic, a day after delivering a stillborn baby at home. The day after her arrest she was taken into custody in the back of a police van, still bleeding, having had major surgery.

In April this year she went to court accused of having an illegal abortion. She was acquitted earlier this month.

In the audio - from a 2020 meeting between Metropolitan Police officers and healthcare professionals - the Met's child abuse investigation lead at the time can be heard saying: "It's not a comfortable area for police to be operating in… any criminalisation around abortions."

He also questions whether the arrest was "the best for Nicola" under the circumstances.

Despite the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) deciding not to prosecute initially, Ms Packer was charged in 2023 after police asked the CPS to review the case.

A Met Police spokesperson said it was "not unusual and is standard practice" for detectives to request that the CPS reviews its decisions.

The force does not comment on the content of internal meetings, it added, which are designed to allow for full and frank discussions so that issues can be explored thoroughly and decisions made in a considered manner.

The Met Police acknowledged how "incredibly difficult" the case had been for Ms Packer, but said its officers had conducted an evidence-led investigation "impartially and without favour".

"The public rightly expects us to pursue the truth - even in sad and complex circumstances", the spokesperson said.

Ms Packer has told the BBC she is also angry at midwives "for calling the police when they really didn't have to".

The online meeting took place for three hours, nearly a week after Nicola Packer's arrest, and was attended by 20 professionals.

The Met's child abuse lead at the time was joined by the officer who made the arrest, child death and neonatal specialists, and a senior midwife at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital - who first called the police.

Such meetings are routine after the death of a child - aiming to establish what happened, learn lessons, and make sure mothers are provided with support.

Ms Packer had taken abortion medication she had received through a pills-by-post system available during the pandemic. Based on her last period, it was estimated that she was about six weeks pregnant.

When the pills took effect, she ended up delivering a stillborn baby at home - and then sought medical help in hospital.

"I did say that I'd had a late miscarriage - because I was really scared to tell them I had taken abortion pills," she tells File on 4 Investigates, in her first broadcast interview since her arrest.

"I didn't know if they were going to help me get the medical support I needed."

Nicola eventually told a senior midwife at the hospital that she had taken the abortion medication. The midwife then called the police.

"I went in in a very supportive manner," the midwife can be heard saying in the leaked recording of the 2020 meeting.

"I essentially said to her, 'We're here to care for you, and we need to know all the information… to support you in the right way.'"

She goes on to explain to the group that Nicola had told her she was shocked when she had given birth to a stillborn baby.

By then, the midwife says in the recording, Nicola was "looking like she wanted the conversation to end, and I didn't want to interrogate her as such".

"I then advised her, because of the gestation assessment of the baby, that we would need to refer to the coroner for an investigation and also to inform the police."

The legal limit for abortion in the UK is 24 weeks of pregnancy. The stillborn baby was assessed to be about 26 weeks.

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Nicola had to have surgery after giving birth. Shortly after the operation, she was arrested and then taken into custody the next day. She was held for about 24 hours in a police cell.

Ms Packer says the midwife should be investigated.

"To me, she just went in there to try and gain my confidence, just so she could then use it against me."

There is no legal duty for medics to report suspected crimes and the midwife was in breach of patient confidentiality for reporting to the police, says Prof Emma Cave, an expert in healthcare regulation who has read a transcript of the recording.

She says the midwife's initial assurance to Ms Packer that her care was going to be the "first concern" seems "at odds" with then being told that police will be informed.

"If people think that by attending hospital they'll be reported to the police, they might avoid treatment and suffer serious health consequences," says Prof Cave.

In response to what happened to Ms Packer and other women, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists released guidance to remind healthcare professionals that it is never in the public interest to report women to the police who might have terminated pregnancies illegally.

It is and always has been doctors' legal duty to respect patients' confidentiality, said the college.

Staff at the Chelsea and Westminster "acted in line with the processes and guidance available to them", said a hospital spokesperson. "Their first priority, as in all cases, was to support and provide care to the patient."

Nicola's case came to court last month - four and a half years after her arrest. She says she was "terrified" of going on trial, but also felt the process had gone on so long, that she just wanted it "over and done with".

"They [prosecutors] were trying to say that I knew how far along I was when I took the first abortion pill. I did not," Nicola says.

When the jury foreman said "not guilty", Ms Packer says she "just burst into tears".

"But then you do sort of start to feel anger, the fact that it even got that far in the first place."

Prosecutors exercise "the greatest care when considering these complex and traumatic cases", a CPS spokesperson said.

"Our role was not to decide whether Nicola Packer's actions were right or wrong; but to make a factual judgement about whether she knew she was beyond the legal limit when she accessed abortion medication."

Ms Packer believes those who were involved in her case now "need to be held accountable". She plans to file a complaint with the Metropolitan Police, the CPS and the NHS over her treatment.

"It's really making me feel sick - the way everything was handled. I did not need to go straight from the hospital to the police station. I could have gone home and recuperated for a couple of days."

"It just could have been handled much more compassionately," says Ms Packer, "causing less trauma than they did."