Man jailed for drugging woman to induce abortion without her consent

A Scottish paramedic has been jailed for over 10 years after secretly giving a woman an abortion drug that caused her to miscarry their unborn child.

Stephen Doohan, 33, was sentenced at the High Court in Glasgow after pleading guilty to assault, sexual assault, and causing an abortion.

The court heard Doohan, a married man and senior paramedic, met the woman in Spain in 2021. She became pregnant in 2023, unaware he was married. Days after learning of the pregnancy, Doohan crushed abortion pills into a syringe and injected her while she lay in bed at his Edinburgh home.

Judge Lord Colbeck said Doohan had "researched and planned" the act, using his medical knowledge to deceive the woman under the guise of consensual intimacy. He described the crimes as “almost as serious as any this court is ever asked to sentence”.

The woman later suffered severe pain and miscarried. She found tablets and a syringe hidden under a mattress, searched online, and realised they were abortion drugs. Although Doohan tried to persuade her to stay silent—buying gifts and pleading with her not to tell doctors—she eventually reported him.

Lord Colbeck said Doohan had put his victim through "considerable pain over a number of days, and left her facing a lifetime of pain and loss."

The Scottish Ambulance Service, which suspended Doohan immediately, said, “This is an appalling case and we recognise the courage it must have taken for the victim to come forward and speak out."

As the UK recently voted to decriminalise abortion up to birth for women and women continue to be able to order abortion pills over the phone, questions remain about how situations of abuse such as this will be recognised and prevented—particularly given the lack of medical oversight through the pills-by-post scheme.