A woman who was jailed for terminating her pregnancy after the legal time limit during lockdown will be released from prison and reunited with her children, after winning a court of appeal effort to reduce her sentence.

A court of appeal judge said Carla Foster, 45, needed “compassion, not punishment”, saying her 28-month sentence would be reduced to 14 months and suspended.

Sentencing her last month, Mr Justice Pepperall said Foster would serve half her term in prison and the rest on licence after her release, after she admitted illegally procuring her own abortion when she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant.

At the court of appeal in London on Tuesday, three judges reduced her prison sentence.

Dame Victoria Sharp, sitting with Lord Justice Holroyde and Mrs Justice Lambert, said: “This is a very sad case … It is a case that calls for compassion, not punishment.”

The woman, a mother of three – who appeared via video link from Foston Hall prison in Derbyshire for the appeal hearing – received the medication under the “pills by post” scheme, which was introduced during the Covid pandemic for unwanted pregnancies up to 10 weeks, after a remote consultation.

Prosecutors said Foster had knowingly misled the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) by saying she was below the 10-week cutoff point, when she believed she was about 28 weeks pregnant.

Doctors later concluded the foetus was from 32 to 34 weeks’ gestation at the time of termination. In England, Scotland and Wales, abortion is generally legal up to 24 weeks but is carried out in a hospital or clinic after 10 weeks.

Clare Murphy, the chief executive of BPAS, said she was “delighted” with the decision to release Foster from prison.

“The court of appeal has today recognised that this cruel, antiquated law does not reflect the values of society today,” she said. “Now is the time to reform abortion law so that no more women are unjustly criminalised for taking desperate actions at a desperate time in their lives.”

Murphy added that two other women accused of illegally ending their own pregnancies were awaiting trial. “We urge parliament to take action and decriminalise abortion as a matter of urgency so that no more women have to endure the threat of prosecution and imprisonment,” she said.

Jemima Olchawski, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said the woman, although now freed, had been subjected to trauma by the trial and original sentence. “I can’t imagine the huge relief she and they must be feeling,” she said. “But clearly, this should never have happened. Prison was never an appropriate place for this woman or an appropriate response to what happened.

“After months and months and months of harm being done to her and to her family, we’ve got to a better place, but it should just never have been necessary for her to go through that in the first place.”