Australia Abortion Practitioner Gets Additional Charge in Botched Abortion Case
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
April 7, 2006
Sydney, Australia (LifeNews.com) — An Australian abortion practitioner has received additional charges in a botched abortion case. Suman Sood had already pleaded not guilty to charges of manslaughter in the death of the unborn child and using a drug to produce a miscarriage.
Now, she will also face a second charge of misusing drugs. Government prosecutor Mark Tedeschi filed court papers Friday with the additional charge.
Sood is on trial for botching a late-term abortion in which the unborn baby survived and died hours after birth. She gave the woman an abortion drug even though RU 486 was not approved for use in Australia.
NSW Supreme Court Justice Graham Barr allowed the amended charges and set a date of July 3 for the trial. Sood will enter a new plea at the time.
Barr also asked both parties in the case to attend a pre-trial hearing in May to examine more documents related to the case.
Sood’s counsel Phillip Boulten, says he will argue the documents, from the Health Care Complaints Commission, are not germane.
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.
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.
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 pregnant 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 has since sold the Australian Women’s Health Clinic and runs just one abortion business now.
