It’s off to prison today for the Hendon Abortionist, Gil Magira. This is the nutter whose reaction to the news that his wife (wife, note, not mistress or maid) was pregnant was not to bestow flowers and extra hugs, but rather to lace her food with ground-up abortion pills. Twice. When a breakfast sarnie failed, he had another go by mixing it in with all the other additives that go into cereal and yoghurt. Which in Londonist's book is tantamount to poisoning, even if it is something else in the statute book.
Now fortunately he failed. Twice. His wife, Mrs. Abraham, was admitted to hospital with internal bleeding, but both she and the child survived. She was slightly less than impressed when he confessed to an apparent fear of children, and not awfully convinced when he professed contrition.
Anyway, this story caught Londonist’s beady eye today (actually we’re rarely beady at the weekend, but hey) because the case is an oddity. The charge of:
"using an instrument to procure a miscarriage"
hasn’t been levied against anyone for around 30 years. It has all the hallmarks of one of those Victorian criminal melodramas. It is frankly surreal.
But Magira is not unique: a similar case has been unfolding in Sweden recently. And this hot on the talons of the anti-freeze-attempted-murder proceedings.
Is this the beginning of something sinister? Is society sick of, er, conventional murder methods?
Dodgy breakfast courtesy of Betacell’s flickr photo stream.
