LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - In short, Catt had terminated her pregnancy - one week before she was due to give birth, as she feared the baby may have been the product of her clandestine lover of seven years. 

After she took the drugs to destroy the child, she says she buried the baby boy was still born and she buried the body in secret. Her story has now landed her in prison for eight long years. Catt already had two children with her husband when she became pregnant in 2009.

Catt tried to terminate the pregnancy in 2010 but discovered she had missed the legal limit of 24 weeks.

Making Internet searches, she typed into search engines the phrases of "Where can I get an illegal abortion?" and "Inducing an abortion at 30 weeks."

The Sherburn-in-Elmet, North Yorkshire mom bought a drug used to terminate pregnancy or induce labor online from a company in Mumbai, India, in May of 2010. The drug was sent to her home when she was 38 weeks pregnant. It's estimated she took the drug when she was 40 weeks pregnant. She was arrested in September of that year. 

Over the course of numerous interviews, Catt told police she had undergone a legal abortion at a Marie Stopes clinic in March of that year, in spite of being nearly 30 weeks pregnant at that stage.

Catt later pleaded guilty earlier this year to administering a poison with intent to procure a miscarriage. Catt had told a psychiatrist she had taken the drug while her husband was away and delivered the child herself at home. She claimed the child was not breathing or moving and she buried the body. She has not yet revealed the location. 

Catt had previously given up a child up for adoption in 1999. Over the course of the investigation, details of her troubled past came to light when it was discovered she later had a abortion with the agreement of her husband, tried to terminate another pregnancy but missed the legal limit and concealed another pregnancy from her husband before the child's birth.

The judge in the case said that the seriousness of the crime lay between manslaughter and murder.

"The critical element of your offending is the deliberate choice made by you, in full knowledge of the due date of your child, to terminate the pregnancy at somewhere close to term, if not actually at term, with the full knowledge that termination after week 24 was unlawful and in full knowledge your child's birth was imminent," the judge said at sentencing.

Catt reportedly displayed no emotion during the hour-long hearing.

"What you did was end the life of a child that was capable of being born alive by inducing birth or miscarriage," the judge declared. "What you have done is rob an apparently healthy child, vulnerable and defenseless, of the life which he was about to commence."

The judge said Catt would have been charged with murder if the baby had been born a few days later and she had then killed him.

"The child in the womb was so near to birth, in my judgment all right-thinking people would think this offense more serious than unintentional manslaughter," he said.

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