met police concerned about abortion arrest in leaked recording
The BBC has released a secretly obtained leaked recording which exposes serious concerns over the arrest of Nicola Packer. A woman was arrested for taking abortion pills at 26 weeks pregnant after mistakenly believing she was just six weeks pregnant after incorrectly tracking her period.
Credit: Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash
The arrest occurred one day after Packer delivered a stillborn baby at home, she was taken into custody while bleeding and recovering after major surgery. A senior midwife at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital initially contacted police to report Packer.
Earlier this month Nicole Packer appeared in court accused of having an illegal abortion but was successfully acquitted.
The secret recording from 2020 contains a meeting between Metropolitan Police Officers and healthcare professionals.
The Met’s Child Abuse Investigation Lead at the time can be heard saying: “There are definitely valid discussions around whether that arrest in the circumstances was best for Nicola herself.”
“It’s an uncomfortable area for police to be operating in, any criminalisation around abortions is not something that sits well with us or something that we really have experience in at all.”
A Met Police spokesperson said the force does not comment on the content of internal meetings and that "the public rightly expects us to pursue the truth - even in sad and complex circumstances" but acknowledged how "incredibly difficult" the case had been for Ms Packer.
Packer had taken abortion medication, obtained via post due to the pandemic. The pills took effect resulting in Packer delivering a stillborn baby at home. Nicola sought medical help in hospital and initially said she had a late miscarriage as she feared telling them the truth. Eventually, Nicola told a senior midwife about the pills and the midwife reported the incident to the police.
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Nicola Packer now wants the midwife to be investigated. She said: "To me, she just went in there to try and gain my confidence, just so she could then use it against me."
Professor Emma Cave, an expert in healthcare regulation, told the BBC: “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.
"If people think that by attending hospital they'll be reported to the police, they might avoid treatment and suffer serious health consequences.”
Packer wants those involved to be held to account and is planning to make formal complaints against the CPS, Met Police, and NHS.
She said: "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…It just could have been handled much more compassionately, causing less trauma than they did."
