Woman Says Boyfriend Who Tried to Cause Abortion Abused Her Too

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Dec 7, 2007   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Woman Says Boyfriend Who Tried to Cause Abortion Abused Her Too Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 7,
2007

Appleton, WI (LifeNews.com) — A Wisconsin woman who says her boyfriend tried to make her have an abortion by putting the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone (RU 486) into a drink also physically abused her. Darshana Patel says Manishkumar M. Patel hurt her to the extent that she jumped from a moving vehicle once to escape him.

Darshana obtained a restraining order against Manishkumar last month and now he has been charged with first-degree intentional homicide for trying to cause Darshana to abort her twin babies.

According to court records the Associated Press obtained, Darshana said Manishkumar abused her physically and emotionally on repeated occasions but she stayed with him even though his divorce with another woman was not finalized.

Darshana became suspicious after she had two miscarries in one year and noticed white powder on the cup of a drink Manishkumar prepared.

Police labs later confirmed the powder was the dangerous abortion drug Manishkumar has purchased in India.

Darshana Patel’s concern for her baby led her to obtain the restraining order after he hit her once and blackened her eye and cut her lip. According to the AP report, she was "afraid (for) my safety and my unborn child’s safety."

Darshana says she believes Manishkumar had given her mifepristone, or the RU 486 abortion drug, which has been responsible for the deaths of thirteen women worldwide (and six in the United States) and injuring more than 1,100 women in the U.S. alone.

Manishkumar, after two different interrogations by police, eventually admitted giving Darshana the abortion drug.

Manishkumar Patel, who is considered very wealthy, posted a cash bond of $750,000 for his bail on Saturday after getting significant sums of money from his own portfolio as well as from family and friends.

Now, the 34-year-old will be represented by an attorney who handled the state’s first case of an attack on a pregnant woman that caused the injury or death of an unborn child.

On the other side, former Attorney Gen. Peg Lautenschlager said she is representing Darshana and has indicated she is considering filing a civil lawsuit against Patel in addition to the criminal charges he already faces.

He could face 99 1/2 years in prison on the charges.

Pro-life groups are saddened by the case but encouraged that an unborn victims law they pressed for is being used to hold Patel accountable for possibly trying to kill the woman’s two unborn children.

"Without Wisconsin’s Fetal Homicide Law, there would be no basis on which to charge Patel in the death of the child," Susan Armacost, the legislative director of Wisconsin Right to Life, told LifeNews.com.

"As horrible as this situation is for the child’s mother, she can at least be comforted by the fact that her child is recognized as a victim under the Fetal Homicide Law and that the death of her child is a crime in Wisconsin," Armacost added.

Wisconsin’s Fetal Homicide Law was enacted in 1998.

The law recognizes unborn children as separate victims when they are killed or injured as the result of violence directed toward the unborn child’s mother or the unborn child by a third party. The law applies regardless of the gestational age of the unborn child.

According to the National Right to Life Committee, 35 states recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances.

Some 25 of those laws protect pregnant women and their unborn children throughout pregnancy and another 10 offer justice only after viability.