Police in southern India are searching for a nurse who allegedly performed an illegal, botched abortion Friday that killed a mother and unborn baby.
The Times of India reports police in Ariyalur, India, said the 27-year-old woman from Kothatti, Cuddalore suffered from severe bleeding after the nurse allegedly performed an illegal abortion at a private home in the area.
Police said the woman was taken to a hospital where she soon died.
According to the report, the woman and her partner asked the nurse, allegedly Krishnaveni, 42, of Rangiyam, to do the abortion because she was pregnant out of wedlock and was afraid of social stigma. Police said the nurse worked at a private hospital in Cuddalore.
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Police said the nurse has not been found yet, but she will face charges. Police said they also are looking for the father of the woman’s aborted baby, who is believed to be married.
Abortions are legal for basically any reason up to 20 weeks in India, so it is not clear why the woman sought an illegal abortion.
Abortion supporters often use such cases as evidence to claim that abortions should be legal. But even when abortions are legal, women sometimes die along with their unborn babies.
LifeNews has documented many cases where women died after legal abortions. These include Tonya Reaves, Cree Erwin, Diana Lopez, Holly Patterson and others. As of 2008, the Centers for Disease Control reported more than 400 women died from legal abortions in the United States, including 12 that year. Four more women died in 2013, according to the CDC. Thousands more have been injured in legal abortions in the U.S. alone.
Growing research indicates that access to basic health care, not legalized abortions, is what really helps improve women’s lives. For example, in 2018, Michelle Oberman, a Santa Clara University law professor, told the Atlantic that she was surprised when she began doing research on abortion in El Salvador. Abortions are illegal there, and she said she expected to find hospitals full of women dying from botched abortions, but she did not. According to Oberman’s research, better access to basic medical care, along with an increased availability of abortion drugs online, are leading to fewer maternal abortion deaths.
A Washington Post fact check also found what pro-life advocates have been saying for years: that, in the United States, few women died from abortions in the decade prior to Roe v. Wade, and a rise in the use of antibiotics appears to be the biggest factor in the drop in maternal deaths, not legalized abortions.
LifeNews Note: File photo,
