Six medical workers in India are accused of hiding a fatally botched abortion by claiming that the mother died of COVID-19.
Times Now News reports the woman died along with her unborn baby after an abortion May 1 at a hospital in Navi Mumbai in western India.
Six medical workers, including doctors and pathologists, allegedly reported her death as COVID-19 related. However, authorities said multiple tests done the day before the woman’s death show that she did not have the virus, according to the Times of India.
The woman who died, Ashwini Thavai, 36, was six weeks pregnant with her unborn baby when she was encouraged to have an abortion for medical reasons, according to the Times of India.
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By six weeks of pregnancy, an unborn baby has a beating heart and his/her own unique DNA. The baby’s limbs, nose, lips and major organs also are beginning to form.
Initially, the mother was given an abortion pill but it did not work, so she underwent a surgical abortion on May 1 at the hospital, the report continues. She began to suffer from excessive bleeding, and doctors transferred her to another hospital; she died just 45 minutes later, the report states.
The doctors initially said her death was COVID-19-related and refused to release her body; however, her medical records show that she had at least two COVID tests the day before the abortion and both were negative.
Police said they arrested six people in connection with the incident.
Abortions, legal or illegal, are not safe for mothers or their unborn babies. In India, abortions are legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy, but courts sometimes allow women to have late-term abortions in cases of rape or a prenatal diagnosis of a disability.
In the United States, nearly 500 women have died along with their unborn babies from legal abortions since Roe v. Wade, according to the Centers for Disease Control. However, the CDC notes that the number is almost certainly an under-count because eight states do not report abortion data to the federal government.
LifeNews also has documented many cases where women died along with their babies after legal abortions. These include Tonya Reaves, Cree Erwin, Lakisha Wilson, Diana Lopez, Holly Patterson and others.
Medical groups confirm that killing an unborn baby in an abortion is not necessary to save a mother’s life, and fact checkers have debunked the claim that legalizing abortion means “the end of women dying from abortions.”
