Nathalie Comrie:
According to several news reports, laxed rules surrounding the abortion pill is making it easier for men to coerce women into having abortions, sometimes without their knowledge.
In one case in September 2013, John Welden from Tampa forged a prescription using his pharmacist father’s notepad to obtain the misoprostol pill. He then deceived his partner into taking the pill. ABC news reported that John Welden scratched off all identifying marks from the abortion pills he obtained and then “placed labels with the name of his girlfriend and the name of a different medicine on the container of the product leaving the drugs original instructions.” She thought she was taking drugs that his father prescribed to her for an infection.
After taking the pills she experienced some painful cramps and the preborn baby shortly after died. Welden’s attorney, Tom Foster, told ABC News, “Mr. Weldon has pled guilty and accepted responsibility for what he did, providing the pills.” He agreed to plead guilty in exchange with the dismissal of the first-degree murder charge and other lesser charges. Even with the guilty plea, according to U.S. Attorney’s Office, Middle District of Florida: “Welden was sentenced to 13 years and 8 months in federal prison for tampering with a consumer product resulting in bodily injury and for conspiracy to commit mail fraud.” He was also ordered to pay $28,541 to the victim for her injuries, including the loss of her preborn child.
More recently, in February of this year, Mason Herring of Houston, Texas, was sentenced to six months in prison for attempting to kill his wife’s child seven times with abortion pills. Catherine Herring, stated in an affidavit that she “drank out of the cup and stopped to take a breath, noticing that the water inside the cup appeared to be cloudy.” She questioned her husband about this, “and he stated that perhaps the cup was dirty, or the pipes were dirty.”
According to other reports of similar cases of women who had the abortion pill put in their drinks, noticed this as well.
Catherine Herring stated she “then began to suspect that something had been placed in her drink and that perhaps it was some kind of abortion drug due to her symptoms and (Mason Herring’s) reaction to finding out that she was pregnant.” She experienced diarrhea, cramps, and bleeding numerous times after ingesting the pills. Her husband’s action, Catherine alleges in her affidavit, caused her to give birth 10 weeks prematurely. The newborn spent several months eating through a feeding tube.
She later discovered the pill labels in the garbage and she also saw video camera footage of her husband slipping the pills into a drink he prepared for her. According to the Law and Crime network Mason Herring plead guilty to “one count of assault of a pregnant person and one count of injury to a child under age 15.” In addition to the six-month sentence, the decision also slapped him with an additional ten years of probation.
In most U.S states, the preborn child is considered a victim of crime so there are legal consequences for secretly giving abortion pills to a pregnant woman.
However, in Canada this may be different. According to section 223 of the Criminal Code of Canada: “(1) A child becomes a human being within the meaning of this Act when it has completely proceeded, in a living state, from the body of its mother, whether or not (a) it has breathed; (b) it has an independent circulation; or (c) the navel string is severed.” The preborn child that has been killed in cases like those in the U.S wouldn’t be considered a human under the law.
Josie Luetke, Campaign Life Coalition director of education and advocacy, said that in Canada it would be “unlikely that the perpetrator would be charged with the death of the baby, unless the baby manages to survive some time outside the mother’s body before dying.” Luetke said, the perpetrator could “likely be charged with assault causing bodily harm (to the mother) for administering a noxious substance.” Under section 245 of the Criminal Code, it states, “Everyone who administers or causes any person to take poison, or any other destructive or noxious thing is guilty of an indictable offence.” If the person intends to cause bodily harm, or death, that holds a penalty of imprisonment maximum two years. The legal consequences would be given for the actions taken against the mother and not the child.
There is help available for women and their babies who find themselves in this situation. This may involve her contacting domestic violence, crisis services, or law enforcement. The abortion pill regimen involves two pills: mifepristone which cuts off oxygen and nutrients to the child followed by misoprostol which causes contractions in the uterus to expel the child. Luetke said, “If the woman has taken mifepristone but not misoprostol, it may be possible to still save the life of her preborn child.” Luetke said promptly beginning a treatment involving the prescription of progesterone, a pregnancy-sustaining hormone, will increase the chances of the baby surviving. Women who find themselves in this situation should visit abortionpillreversal.ca or call 1-888-612-3960 as soon as possible.
Luetke said that Health Canada and the Food and Drug Administration relaxing regulations around the abortion, by lifting requirements for in-person doctor visits and an ultrasound, made it easier for “malicious individuals” to “drug pregnant women to kill their preborn offspring.” The abortion pill can be distributed by mail in the United States, with prescribing doctors unaware of who is receiving and using mifepristone. The pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute observed in a brief on the abortion pill, “With phone or video consultations, it is impossible to ensure that you are seeing the woman alone.”
The problem of abusive partners seeking to kill their preborn child is made apparent by statistics such as one-quarter of women seeking abortion feel coerced into having them and that 30 per cent of domestic partner abuse either begins or intensifies during pregnancy. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service advises physicians that “women have to be seen alone … then they can be confident the woman is choosing abortion for herself and is not under any coercive abuse.”
