Teenager Dies After Attempting to Abort a Non-Existent Pregnancy

International   |   Dave Andrusko   |   Dec 30, 2013   |   7:27PM   |   Washington, DC

A Ghanaian news service reported today that a 17-year-old girl died earlier this month after taking unspecified herbs to abort what turned out to be a non-existent pregnancy.

The deceased teenager, already the mother of one, reported to school in Ho, Ghana, December 3, and complained of stomach pains. Her parents, unaware of the real situation, addressed that issue only to later rush their daughter to the Royal Hospital in Ho, according to Ghana News Today.

“[D]octors revealed that she had taken a concoction which had destroyed the organs in the stomach,” the new service reported. “She died about three hours later.”

Ghana News Today’s reporter interviewed a friend of the deceased teenager’s mother (“Sheila”). She said the mother was raising the first child so that her daughter could continue her education.

Suspecting she was pregnant again, however, the teenager confided to a friend that she had gone ahead “to seek the assistance of the herbalist who prepared the potion for her to abort the foetus,” according to the story. “Sheila said her friend [the mother of the teenager] explained that when the deceased took the potion, she bled a little but maintained that the entire foetus had not been destroyed and, therefore, continued to take the potion.”

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However “a check from her medical records did not indicate that she had been pregnant,” Ghana News Today reported. “Her visibly saddened mother could not hold back her tears at the funeral and kept on asking why her daughter kept the issue from her.”

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in his National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.