A Massachusetts man is accused of misleading his ex-girlfriend into taking a drug that can cause an abortion.
According to the Middlesex County District Attorney, Robert Kawada, 43, was charged with poisoning, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon on a pregnant person, and assault and battery on a household or family member.
According to Watertown Police, Kawada and the woman met on a dating app and had been dating for a couple of months. After they broke up, she told him she was pregnant and he allegedly tricked her into taking pills to induce an abortion.
“He would provide the victim with pills that he informed her were iron pills or other vitamins,” said prosecutor Jacob McCrindle. “The defendant would also check the victim’s mouth by pulling on the victim’s cheek to make sure she had consumed the pills.”
Kawada allegedly gave the woman drugs that McCrindle said were found to be consistent with misoprostol, the second drug used in the abortion pill regimen (which is not regulated under the FDA’s REMS safety protocol). Prosecutors said that a call to an online pharmacy that sells misoprostol was made from Kawada’s phone. His recent cell phone searches also included “9-week aborted fetus pics,” “telephone voice changer,” and “chewing Misoprostol.” Kawada allegedly faked a phone call from a nurse telling his ex-girlfriend that she needed to take iron pills — which he happened to have on hand.
After taking the pills, the woman “was cold, shivering and she felt very uneasy,” said McCrindle. “She went to sleep and had very bad cramps.” The woman’s preborn child died, and after she delivered the child, McCrindle said Kawada asked her to send him pictures of the baby — ostensibly as proof of the child’s death.
Kawada was arrested by police on May 24 and arraigned in Waltham District Court on May 28. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $100,000 bail. Kawada is due back in court on July 23.
The two-drug abortion pill regimen
The standard abortion pill regimen consists of two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol. The regimen is approved by the FDA for use to kill a preborn child up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. Mifepristone (which is under the FDA’s REMS safety protocol) blocks the naturally occurring pregnancy hormone progesterone, breaking down the lining of the uterus and cutting off oxygen and nutrients to the developing baby. Twenty-four to 48 hours later, the woman then takes misoprostol, which causes contractions to expel the baby.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, abortion advocates have been working to expand access to the abortion pill and ensure that it is easier to obtain. The Biden FDA has been progressively lifting safety requirements originally placed on mifepristone in 2011, and it announced in January 2023 that it would begin allowing retail pharmacies, including Walgreens and CVS, to dispense the abortion pill. Women are no longer required to have a medical examination to date the pregnancy or ensure they are not experiencing an ectopic pregnancy before they are prescribed the abortion pill (known as the “no test” protocol). In addition, abortion pill websites are encouraging women to stockpile ‘advance provision’ abortion pills to keep on-hand in case of pregnancy. And the FDA seems unconcerned, though its own safety protocols are being flouted, and women could be harmed.
Currently, the Charlotte Lozier Institute reports that there are “at least 72 unique websites that sell either just Misoprostol (10) or both Misoprostol and Mifepristone (62) in MTP (medical termination of pregnancy) kits.” At least 20 of the sites do not have gestational limits for purchasing the drugs.
Lack of regulations leads to abuse
The lack of regulations on abortion drugs opens the door for abusive and dangerous situations. The abortion-inducing drugs women buy online could be fake pills with unknown ingredients. In addition, women are not receiving counseling or a medical exam before taking the drugs, meaning in many cases, they have no doctor to call when experiencing complications — and a later gestational age or ectopic pregnancy puts women at increased risk of serious complications.
Such easy access to abortion drugs also allows abusive men to get their hands on abortion pills to kill preborn children without the mother’s knowledge. Kawada is not the only man accused of giving a woman an abortion-inducing drug without her consent, and he is likely not the last. One woman believed she was taking amoxicillin, but her boyfriend had actually swapped out her medication with abortion drugs. She said, “There’s just no words for the horror I wake up with every day that this is my reality. There’s no escaping it, there’s no turning it off.”
As previously reported by Live Action News, nurse-practitioner David Coots was arrested, along with his wife Melissa, after he allegedly inserted abortion-inducing drugs into his pregnant mistress during sex. In another case, Ursula Wing was arrested for illegally selling abortion pills, having been caught after one of her clients, Jeffrey Smith, bought the pills from her and slipped them into his girlfriend’s water bottle. Manishkumar Patel and Jin Mimae were both arrested for slipping women abortion-inducing drugs, and there are seemingly numerous similar cases.
The mifepristone case before the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court is currently deciding the case of Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) v. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which challenges the FDA’s most recent expansions of the drug mifepristone, which include the decision to drop the requirement of in-person visits to obtain the pills and the approval of the dispensing of abortion drugs virtually, by mail, or at the pharmacy counter. AHM aims to hold the FDA accountable for failing to protect women when it expanded the use of mifepristone.
Mifepristone has remained available under an April order from the U.S. Supreme Court and will stay in effect until the court releases its ruling on the case in June.
Meanwhile, abortion advocates have been promoting misoprostol-only abortions out of fear that the FDA will be forced by the Supreme Court to retract its approval of mifepristone. However, misoprostol-only abortions have a lower efficacy rate compared to that of the mifepristone/misoprostol abortion regimen. This matters, because if an abortion drug is ineffective in causing a complete abortion, a woman may be put at risk of infection, hemorrhage, and sepsis, which can be fatal.
This drug, heavily promoted by abortion advocates, is the very drug that Kawada allegedly gave his pregnant ex-girlfriend without her knowledge.
