"When most of us find out we are pregnant we surprise our partner, tell our mums - who cry happy tears about being a grandma - and celebrate with our girlfriends.
Not in Sudan.
Over there one of your family dobs you in to the police and are packed off to a court for your sins. Sudanese Muslims really know how to show the love.
Her crime? She married a Christian man, and her Muslim family decided that she should die for that sin. She has a two year old son and is pregnant with her second child.
A baying mob gathered outside the court room sweating at the crotch in excitement that a pregnant woman might be sentenced to something really painful. They celebrated at the thought of her writhing in agony.
Sudan is not alone in this horror. On May 1st, the Sultan of Brunei adopted Sharia Law. He owns the Dorchester and other luxury hotels in the UK.
Under this brutal penal code, a married woman will be stoned to death if she is raped – because she has committed adultery. It makes me want kick the Sultan in his sultanas – shrivelled little things that they are. Gay men will face death by stoning too - reason enough not to take up the offer of a Dorchester Chelsea Flower Show afternoon tea at £75 a head.
They do all these cruel things shouting 'Allah is great'.
It is medieval. In the 1700's crowds used to gather around the guillotine to see the head sliced off the body. In France women used to sit knitting between executions to pass the time. But that was 300 hundred years ago – when life was cruel and suffering was a spectacle.
It is 2014, but Sudan is going back in time. Last week they shut down their university because students are a disruptive influence. Soon they will be knitting burkas watching women hang.
They are the new dinosaurs – monsters from another age.
Miriam's unborn child will be spared. She will have to endure a pregnancy, a painful birth and see her little baby born – knowing he will grow up without a mother. Her 2 year old son is with her in prison at the moment, waiting for her execution. Her husband will not be allowed to see his wife again until he sees her hanging from the gallows. He is banned from any contact with the children. He will never see his unborn child.
Despite the torture of 100 lashes and the horror of hanging, the thought of the children growing up without their mum or dad is surely the cruellest punishment of all. "