In a gruesome incident in India, a 16-year-old teen walked into a police superintendent’s office to file a rape complaint carrying her aborted child in a bag given to her by the hospital after medical personnel told her to throw her deceased child into the river. The incident took place last Wednesday in the Satna district of Madhya Pradesh and caused quite a commotion, as the victim belonged to the Dalit community and her initial complaint with the local police was not accepted.
The victim walked to the Superintendent of Police’s office with her dead child, after which a complaint was filed in the matter against five locals, including the nurse who forcibly committed the abortion. Charges include IPC section 316 – culpable homicide of an unborn child, and section 313 – causing miscarriage without the consent of the woman. Several reports claim that the aborted child was between four and six months old. However, city Superintendent of Police SP Pandey told news 18 that consensual sex took place between the victim and the accused, but that the rest of the charges need to be investigated.
According to the Times of India, the victim, who was a victim of repeated rape for months, experienced severe cramps after which she decided to visit the doctor with her mother. On the way, she was stopped by the rapist and forcefully taken to a private clinic where her child was aborted. “The doctors put the foetus in a bag and gave it to me saying, ‘throw it in nullah (river)’ then they gave me Rs.20 (approximately $0.30) for auto fare and shooed me away,” she told the Times. She also mentioned that she was threatened by the rapists. The two men, who are brothers, said that if she told anyone about the abortion, there would be dire consequences.
Madhya Pradesh is known to be one of the most dangerous states for women in India. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) of India recorded a total of 2,266 cases of infanticide across the country from 1994-2014. Out of these, Madhya Pradesh topped the others with 537 cases (or 24% of all the cases) of female infanticide registered in India. The NCRB also recorded 1,663 cases of foeticide in the last 15 years from 2001 to 2015. Once again, Madhya Pradesh topped with 360 cases. According to the State Crime Records Bureau, one woman is raped every two hours in Madhya Pradesh.
Certain crucial information about the case still remains unknown, such as whether the facility where the abortion was committed was a licensed facility. According to the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971, abortions committed at state approved facilities are required to have one medical doctor present during the abortion if the child is up to 12 weeks and two medical practitioners if the pregnancy exceeds 12 weeks. However, in this case, the second trimester abortion was conducted by a nurse. Therefore the hospital staff should be questioned and the facility should come under investigation. Below, former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explains a typical second trimester procedure known as a D&E:
This is not the first time a rape victim in India has been subjected to abortion instead of getting justice and healing.
Earlier in November 2017 a minor in the southern district of Salem in Tamil Nadu was repeatedly raped and subjected to abortion four times after which she died during the last botched abortion. It was later learned that the facility was being illegally operated by a quack doctor. Another incident of a minor who was subjected to rape for three months and then died from a botched abortion in Rajasthan took place in September of 2017.
While India performs 15.6 million abortions per year and pushes for more liberal abortion laws to allow non-allopathic medical practitioners to commit abortions, it is important to note that 283 quack doctors were arrested in 2017 in just one state for killing preborn children in illegal centers, and these are the hotspots which assist and cover up for rapists and other sexual predators.
