A “cold and calculating” mother has been jailed for eight years after robbing her unborn baby boy of his chance of life when she aborted him within a week of his due date.

Sarah Catt, who was married but had been having an affair for seven years, was about 40-weeks pregnant when she took drugs she bought on the internet to induce her labour.

She claimed the baby was stillborn and she buried his body, but has since refused to tell anyone where to find her son.

Catt, of of Newley Lane, Horsforth , who showed no emotion during the hour-long sentencing, was described as “cold and calculating” by police, who searched her then home in Sherburn-in-Elmet, North Yorkshire, with dogs and specialist equipment to try to find the child’s body.

Mr Justice Cooke told Leeds Crown Court yesterday the seriousness of the crime lay between manslaughter and murder.

He said she 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 that, in my judgment, all right-thinking people would consider this offence more serious than manslaughter or any offence on the calendar other than murder,” he said.