"I had an abortion for the same reason - bad timing, partner didn't want the baby"

Vicky Pryce, charged with perversion of justice

Vicky Pryce has been found guilty of perversion of justice, and could have been sentenced to life (the biggest sentence anyone can get for this crime), but has got eight months in prison. She had made herself a whistle-blower, wanting to shame her journalist turned Lib-Dem-politician husband in the media when she revealed/claimed in the newspapers that he had made her take his speeding points, so that he would avoid a driving ban. In court, her defence for why she took the points was 'marital coercion'. To prove her case, she gave supporting evidence in the from of her revelation in court to having aborted a 'healthy' baby, following what she described as relentless pressure from her then-husband Huhne. Vicky Pryce described herself as 'accidentally pregnant' and said, 'despite my protestations, he got me to have an abortion, which I have regretted ever since.” Heart-breaking as this may be, the jury refused to believe it or did not think it relevant.

Pryce was not suing her husband because he pushed her into an abortion against her will. Had she taken her ex-husband to court for this reason - there may have been an entirely different outcome.

Instead, during a court battle when Dr Pryce was caught out in many lies, the jury decided to believe that both Pryce and Huhne had connived in lying, and that they both had known that they were breaking the law when she took his speeding points. Doubt hangs over Pryce because it is widely assumed her motives were inspired by revenge - Huhne left her for another woman in 2010 and the speeding points incident happened in 2003. 

Vicky Pryce's tear stained testimony of her reluctant abortion has prompted small pockets of debate concerning whether or not it is legal for pregnant women to be put under pressure/harassed into abortion. To use a counter example, there are sexual harassment cases, where someone sues on the basis that they were harassed into sexual relations that they would not have done, had they not been harassed. Would it be comparable to have abortion harassment cases where someone asserts they were bullied into a medical procedure?

Fr Lucie-Smith blogged about Vicky Pryce's abortion, and an anonymous reader left the following comment where she outlines in stark terms the pressure she was under from her partner, because of her job, and because the abortion clinic withheld information about the abortion - until she was actually undergoing it.

"I had an abortion for the same reason - bad timing, partner didn't want the baby and I was on a temporary contract, which would not have been renewed.

They don't tell you what will happen either. Only once I had taken the requisite pill to induce the abortion, did they then tell me that I would experience labour pains. Nor do they tell you that you will deliver a tiny foetus into a kidney dish which they put in a paper lunchbag for you to give to the doctor to examine.

Coercion, especially when it is from a combination of people, added to the lies told to you by the abortion clinics and chuck in a measure of despair and hopelessness can drive you to rationalise and justify evil.

Vicky Pryce is not the first, she won't be the last and neither should she be condemned for what she did, even though it was an abhorrent act.

This type of coercion happens every single day, a coercion that is added to by a society that mandates and encourages abortion as being a responsible choice and leaves devastated women and dead babies in its wake.

So long as one 'wants' an abortion it is legal in the UK.

One has to feel even more sorry for Vicky Pryce as she probably hasn't had the chance to embrace the Sacrament of Confession or find any healing in the severest mercy of The Lord.

If she was prepared to abort her baby under pressure, then speeding points would have seemed like small fry. Poor woman."