A husband who put crushed pills in his wife’s breakfast to make her abort their unborn child was jailed yesterday in the first case of its kind for 40 years.

Gil Magira, 36, who was described by his counsel as a bizarre and neurotic “Woody Allen character”, bought drugs unavailable in Britain over the internet when he learnt that his wife had become pregnant.

He gave his wife breakfast in bed, having crushed the drugs into her sandwich, and then, the next day, did the same with her yoghurt and cereal, the Old Bailey was told Mr Magira had married his wife on the understanding that they would not have children because he felt unworthy to be a father, Jonathan Goldberg, QC, in mitigation, told the court. His attempts to cause Anat Abraham to miscarry – which came to light when he confessed to a psychologist – left her in pain and bleeding but the child survived unharmed and was born prematurely in June last year.

The Crown Prosecution Service said: “Mr Magira committed an appalling and selfish act which, fortunately, did not have the tragic consequence he was looking for.”

The judge, Mr Recorder Oliver Sells, sentenced Magira to three years and nine months in prison. He will serve another 13½ months, taking into account the time that he has spent in custody. The judge said he was satisfied that Israeli-born Magira, who ran two kosher bakeries and a restaurant in Hendon and Edgware, North London, was not a danger to the public, but he “was of the view that the offence merits a sentence of immediate imprisonment”.

The court had heard from Simon Mayo, for the prosecution, that Magira was having “constant and compulsive” thoughts about making his wife have an abortion. Ms Abraham said that she was terrified for her life and that of her baby when she realised what her husband had done.

Magira, who was described by Mr Goldberg as a “tortured soul, a Woody Allen character, a deeply private man and a loner”, regretted what he had done and wanted to help to look after the child, the court was told. Mr Goldberg said that it had been “a one-off” episode and that Magira, who had been in custody for nine months, was overcome with remorse.

Magira, 36, of Hendon, pleaded guilty to using an instrument to procure a miscarriage. When he learnt in November 2006 that his wife was pregnant, his reaction was to panic and beg her to have an abortion, Mr Mayo said. When she refused he began to research for abortion medication on the internet. When she was 11 weeks’ pregnant, in February last year, he put it into a sandwich that he made for her.

Ms Abraham, who was 38 at the time, began to feel pain after starting work at a bakery they ran together and went to hospital. But the baby was still alive and Magira then put the pills in her yoghurt and cereal the next morning. When this still did not work he told a psychologist what he had done, and followed her advice to tell his wife.

In May last year, Magira took an overdose and said in hospital that “either he or the child would have to die”. He was arrested that month after his wife told police what he had done.

His son, Matan Abraham, was born weighing 2kg (4lb 7oz) on June 20 last year. There was no evidence that his premature birth was linked to the tablets. The baby’s mother said that her husband’s actions were “inhuman” and she was shocked when she found out. “I realised I had lived with a person for ten years who I don’t really know,” she said in a victim impact statement read to the court.

The judge told Magira: “You knew the risks in using those drugs without the proper medical conditions being in place.” He had bought the drugs, RU-486 and misoprostol, at “considerable expense”.The judge added: “It was a terrible aberration. No one who has heard what occurred can be in any doubt what you were setting out to do.”

Road to respectability

— Professor Gary Slapper, Director of Law at the Open University, said of yesterday’s case: “This charge is an unusual one in modern times. Since the general legalisation of abortions in 1967 they have been openly available subject to proper considerations. So, prosecutions for procuring miscarriages under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 have been rare”

— He added that in 2002, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children failed in an action to get the High Court to declare the emergency Pill illegal, also citing the 1861 Act, which prohibits the supply of any “poison or other noxious thing” with intent to cause miscarriage

— He said that in modern times prosecutions had mainly arisen in two situations. One was where the law had been side-stepped, such as when two medical opinions were not sought. Another was where violence had been used, such as punching a pregnant woman in the stomach

— Abortion was legal under common law historically but after protests from doctors over the dangers of the procedure it was made a crime in 1803, subject to execution or exile. It was then regulated in the Offences against the Person Act of 1837 and then of 1861, which eliminated the death penalty and then exile as penalties. It did not become legal again until the Abortion Act 1967

Times Recommends

• Time-worn Freddie gives up Test matches
• Brighton company 'involved in cyber attack'
• The art of survival: it's all in the mind