Australia Abortion Practitioner’s Illegal Abortion Trial Continues 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
November 25, 2005
Sydney, Australia (LifeNews.com) — An abortion practitioner in Australia is continuing to stand trial for a botched late-term abortion in which the unborn baby survived and died hours after birth. Suman Sood is the first abortion practitioner to go on trial for the manslaughter of an unborn child and the first to be charged since the 1970s.
Sood, who has performed more than 10,000 abortions, gave a woman an abortion drug in May 2002 and asked her to come back to his office the next day.
The woman went home and gave birth to a baby in the early morning hours while using the bathroom. The infant boy lived only five hours before dying.
Sood, owner of the Australian Women’s Health abortion business, was charged with manslaughter in the death of the baby and giving a woman drugs intended to cause an abortion. The abortion drug RU 486 is not approved for use in Australia, though members of Parliament hope to change that soon.
According to The Australian newspaper, Liverpool Local Court magistrate Tony Marsden found that there was a reasonable chance of a conviction and is allowing the trial to proceed.
At a court hearing back in August, prosecutors said the abortion was illegal because Sood did not properly check the woman’s physical and mental health.
Sood told The Weekend Australian yesterday she would fight the charges.
"These things that have been presented and said are not the truth and I am all ready to defend and fight for it," she said. "I don’t think I have done anything wrong. It is a challenge to me personally and a challenge to the profession. This could happen to anybody — it is just distortion of the facts."
In August, Sood claimed she didn’t perform the illegal abortion but referred the woman to another abortion facility and told her the abortion could not be performed legally in New South Wales.
The woman was 22 weeks pregnancy and that’s long after the abortion drug is supposed to be used and after the legal limit for performing abortions in the Southeast province.
Sood’s claim appears in an affidavit she filed weeks after the disputed 2002 abortion took place.
Sood moved to Sydney from Adelaide in 1992 and says she has done 10,000 abortions at her two Sydney abortion facilities. She has since sold the Australian Women’s Health Clinic and runs just one abortion business now.
