Medical Officials Check Into Claims Girls Doing Self-Abortions With Cow Drugs
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 23, 2009
Madison, WI (LifeNews.com) — Medical officials in Wisconsin are checking into claims that teenage girls in Wisconsin are engaging in self-abortions using veterinary drugs intended to treat livestock. The strange phenomenon has been increasingly reported in the Midwestern state even though the abortion drug mifepristone is readily available.
Abortion advocates claim that making surgical abortions and medical abortions using the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug more available stops so-called "back alley abortions" where women do their own abortions.
But that doesn’t appear to be the case in Wisconsin.
Officials with the Care Net Pregnancy Center of Green County in Monroe say they know of at least 10 teenage girls who have used the veterinarian drugs meant for cattle to do self-abortions.
Anna Anderson, the director of the center has said the girls find the drugs are significantly cheaper than buying the mifepristone abortion pill at Planned Parenthood or an independent abortion business.
She also says the rural teens are using the cow drugs because they didn’t want their parents to find out about their pregnancies.
Anderson says she is concerned because the drug will obviously kill the developing baby, but hurt the teens as well.
"There’s no doubt that it will effectively take a baby’s life," Anderson said. "Ultimately, what these girls aren’t realizing is that it could be deadly to them."
Wisconsin Department of Health Services spokesman Seth Boffeli says state medical officials are skeptic about the reports, but he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel they plan to check into them anyway.
"The extent of this is e-mails and Web sites," Boffeli told the paper. "There’s no proof that this is occurring."
Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin spokeswoman Pat Else also tells the newspaper that the abortion business is conducting its own probe into the claims.
The prostaglandin drugs are normally used by cow breeders to regulate the animals’ heat cycles for greater reproductive control.
The potential incidents have prompted the American Veterinary Medical Association to issue a warning to farmers and ranchers about how and where they store the drugs.
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