Third-trimester baby dies on floor after Singapore girl takes mail-order abortion drugs

News reports in Singapore claim that a “young girl” ordered abortion drugs online and took them at home, only to then give birth to her baby girl, born alive, on her bathroom floor. The baby, whose estimated age was between 29 and 33 weeks gestation, died despite efforts to save her.

According to reports, the girl, whose name and age have not been released, suspected she was pregnant because she had missed her period and gained weight. However, she never went to a doctor to confirm her pregnancy, and evidently had no real knowledge of how far advanced her pregnancy was. She ordered abortion drugs online in an effort to conceal the pregnancy from her parents, and then allegedly “swallowed the whole bottle of pills” at home. Lianhe Zaobao reports, “She initially went back to her room to sleep, thinking that the fetus had not yet formed and that she would be fine after expelling a pool of blood.”

Instead, she woke in such pain that she had to lie on the bathroom floor. She called her mother for help and then gave birth to her baby. Although the baby received CPR, she eventually died; reports later showed the infant suffered heart failure.

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The reports do not state what type of abortion drugs the girl ingested. However, obtaining abortion drugs by mail has become much easier in recent years. The “no-test” abortion pill regimen (mifepristone paired with misoprostol) can be obtained online without a doctor’s visit. By receiving abortion drugs through the mail, the girl bypassed an important in-person visit which could have informed her of the gestational age of her preborn child and precluded her from receiving abortion drugs.

In the United States, the abortion pill regimen is FDA-approved for use through 10 weeks of pregnancy; taking the abortion pill after that time frame greatly increases the risk to the woman, as well as the chance that the abortion pill will fail.

As abortion advocates continue to advocate for easy access to the abortion pill, including via mail order, tragic and horrifying stories like this one will increase. Live Action News has reported on a number of other instances in which women have experienced adverse effects after receiving the pill through the mail and/or without a gestational-dating ultrasound. These including the following:

• In the United Kingdom, a baby died after his mother took the abortion pill when she was 30 weeks pregnant; she had failed to receive an ultrasound to confirm her child’s gestational age.

• In Nebraska, teenager Celeste Burgess was convicted after prosecutors said she took the abortion pill when she was 29 weeks pregnant. An autopsy of Celeste’s baby left open the possibility that the child had been born alive before dying.

• A woman in the UK gave birth to a stillborn baby after taking the abortion pill at 28 weeks.

• A 24-year-old Irish woman nearly died when she experienced a life-threatening ruptured ectopic pregnancy after she was given the abortion pill. An ultrasound prior to taking the pill would have detected the ectopic pregnancy.

The story also comes amidst the release of a bombshell report stating that serious adverse events from the abortion pill (mifepristone) occur at a rate approximately 22 times higher than the rate reported on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) label.