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NRL News
Boyfriend Charged with Spiking Pregnant
Girlfriend’s Drink with RU486 On September 17, 2007, Darshana Patel became suspicious when the smoothie her boyfriend bought her at the Appleton, Wisconsin, ice cream shop came with a white powder around the rim. She was in the early stages of pregnancy and had already lost a child a few months earlier—and she was concerned her boyfriend might have had something to do with it, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Feigning illness, Patel took the smoothie back to her office, where she worked as a family physician, and had a sample sent to a California lab for testing. The lab found indications of RU486, the abortion pill, the Associated Press reported. Patel miscarried and lost the second child on September 30. Though Patel never drank the smoothie, she had eaten other food recently prepared by her boyfriend, according to the Journal Sentinel. Armed with the test results, she notified the Outagamie County Sheriff’s office, and authorities arrested Manishkumar Patel on Wednesday, November 28, 2007, charging him with attempted first-degree murder on an unborn child and a number of other charges. The Journal Sentinel reported that the rationale Manishkumar gave authorities was that he “didn’t need more babies” and “didn’t want it.” Despite having the same last name, a common Indian name, Manishkumar was not married or related to Darshana, though they had a three-year-old son together and Manishkumar and his wife lived in a house owned by Darshana. Manishkumar owns a string of local gas stations and other businesses in the Appleton area. If convicted of all charges, Manishkumar faces a maximum penalty of 99 and 1/2 years in prison and a $92,000 fine. Manishkumar has been released after posting a $750,000 bond and a court date of January 30, 2008, has been set, according to the Appleton Post-Crescent. Sue Armacost, legislative director for Wisconsin Right to Life, credited Wisconsin’s 1998 Fetal Homicide Law in playing a key role in holding Manishkumar accountable for his actions. “Without Wisconsin’s Fetal Homicide Law, there would be no basis on which to charge Patel in the death of the child,” said Armacost. “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.” The Associated Press reported that Manishkumar Patel admitted that he had given his girlfriend the drug and later told investigators he had gotten the pills from India. A number of Indian companies sell the drug over the Internet, but the FDA has warned Americans that unauthorized import of the drug for personal use is both illegal and dangerous (Drug Store News, 1/20/03, www.fda.gov/cder/drug/infopage/mifepristone, accessed 12/4/07, FDA Release, 12/9/02). Women taking RU486 can cramp and bleed profusely, with some having to be treated for hemorrhage. Some taking the drug have died after contracting rare, but lethal infections. Alone, the drug does not “work” all the time, so the process is normally supplemented by a prostaglandin, misoprostol, which stimulates uterine contractions to expel the child. Doctors are supposed to monitor all steps of the process to ensure that the abortion is complete and that there are no serious complications. In the U.S., doctors are responsible for seeing that all steps of the process are monitored. RU486 has not made abortion easier on women. Even under ordinary circumstances, a chemical abortion with RU486 can be a taxing ordeal. Severe cramping and extensive bleeding are normal parts of the process, and diarrhea, vomiting, and nausea are common side effects. A woman undergoing an RU486 abortion bleeds more than she would from a standard first-trimester surgical abortion, and the abortion process may take days or even weeks, if it occurs at all. While it comes with risks of its own, a surgical abortion is over in a matter of minutes. As this case demonstrates, however, RU486 has opened women up to a whole new form of exploitation. While a man could subtly or not so subtly coerce a woman to go to an abortion clinic for a surgical abortion, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to perform a surgical procedure on her without her knowledge. Chemically induced abortions, on the other hand, present a different option. Chemical abortions have given abortion clinics a chance to make easier money, especially if they skip the steps where women are supposed to come back for return visits. The drug’s development, though, and the availability, in particular, of off-brand RU486 on the Internet, allows men the opportunity to not only have their partners have an abortion on the cheap, but to unilaterally have unborn children they create killed without the mother’s knowledge or consent. The problem, of course, is abortion’s being legal in the first place, creating circumstances in which human life can be devalued and disregarded. Once that has been done to the unborn child, it is only a short logical step to the dehumanization and exploitation of others, including the child’s mother. Neither the idea, nor the technology, can be so easily stuffed back inside the evil genie’s pill bottle. |