Wisconsin Man Who Tried to Cause Girlfriend’s Abortion Jumps Bond

State   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Dec 30, 2007   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Wisconsin Man Who Tried to Cause Girlfriend’s Abortion Jumps Bond Email this article
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
December 30,
2007

Appleton, WI (LifeNews.com) — A Wisconsin man who tried to make his girlfriend have an abortion by putting the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone (RU 486) into a drink has apparently jumped bail.

Officials say 34-year-old Manishkumar Patel did not check into a day report center as required under the terms of the $750,000 bond he paid with the help of friends and family.

As a result, Outagamie County Court Commissioner Maureen Budiac issued an arrest warrant on Friday with the additional charge of bail jumping that carries a $1 million bail price.

Because Partel was only required to check into the facility on a weekly basis, he could have left the area or the country a week ago, making it more difficult for authorities to track his whereabouts.

Patel gave authorities his passport as a condition of the bond but that doesn’t mean someone hasn’t tried to smuggle him out of the country and back to his native India.

Outagamie County Sheriff Brad Gehring blames the day center for giving Patel a week off from checking in because of the Christmas holiday.

"He checked in last Thursday and they told him he didn’t have to show up on Tuesday because it was a holiday," Gehring told the Appleton Post-Crescent on Friday. "He did not show up yesterday and they notified us this morning."

"They have a court order and just because it was a holiday they gave him a week off," he added. "And clearly he was a flight risk."

Gehring said Patel is not at a local hotel where he is supposedly staying while the case progresses and he said local authorities are trying to determine if he is in the area or has fled.

The newspaper indicated his attorney, Thomas Zoesch, also doesn’t know Patel’s location.

Darshana Patel says her boyfriend hurt her to the extent that she jumped from a moving vehicle once to escape him. She had 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 miscarriages 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 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.

For his attorney, Patel has a lawyer 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.