(Life News) A grieving father in Papua New Guinea called on health authorities to investigate the sales of abortion drugs after his 16-year-old daughter died after taking the abortion drug misoprostol.
The Papua New Guinea Post-Courier reports the young woman from Port Moresby bought the abortion drug on the street with money that she requested for school supplies, her father said.
“Having lost my only daughter, I do not want to see other families also lose their daughters through abortion,” her father told the newspaper. “I call on authorities and the Department of Health to please look into this and find out how misoprostol is being sold on the streets in broad daylight.”
The father, who asked not to be named to protect his family’s identity, said his daughter was his oldest child and only girl.
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He said she recently asked him for 500 kina (about $140) to buy school supplies and shoes.
“She kept asking for some days and she looked sad, so I gave her the money to buy the things she had requested, never realizing that I gave her the money to buy misoprostol that eventually killed her,” he told the newspaper.
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Abortion is illegal in Papua New Guinea, but pro-abortion groups in the United States and Europe are telling women that abortion drugs are safe and openly promoting at-home abortions. Some of these groups even have been highlighted and celebrated in major publications for selling abortion drugs online without ever seeing the woman in person. Even though the drug is illegal it is the exact same drug used legally to kill babies in abortions worldwide.
Dr. Sam Yockopua, chief emergency physician at the Port Moresby General Hospital, said self-induced abortions are a growing problem in their country, and more women and girls are coming to the hospital with complications. Some women hide the fact that they have had an abortion until it is too late, and a few have died, he said.
Yockopua told the newspaper that abortion is “very dangerous,” noting risks of heavy blood loss, infections and infertility. However, he said some pharmacies and private medical facilities are still selling abortion drugs in violation of the law.
He urged women and girls to seek help “right from the start” and be proactive.
“The best way to prevent all this is really to avoid pregnancy at the first place. Very simple!” he said.
Misoprostol is a labor-inducing drug that is used in many abortions. In the U.S., abortion facilities give women misoprostol in combination with another abortion drug, mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone and basically starves the unborn baby to death before he/she is expelled from the womb.
Researchers and experts on both sides of the abortion debate agree that neither drug is as effective on its own in aborting an unborn baby. In the U.S., the drugs are used together to abort unborn babies up to 10 weeks of pregnancy.
Mifepristone also has been linked to major complications and deaths. In the United States, it has been linked to at least 24 women’s deaths and 4,000 serious complications. Risks include excessive bleeding, severe abdominal pain, infection and hemorrhage.
A 2009 study “Immediate Complications After Medical Compared With Surgical Termination of Pregnancy,” in Obstetrics and Gynecology found a complication rate of approximately 20 percent for the abortion drugs compared to 5.6 percent for surgical abortions. Hemorrhages and incomplete abortions were among the most common complications.
Despite the risks, President Joe Biden’s administration recently stopped enforcing safety regulations on the abortion drugs and began allowing abortion facilities to sell them through the mail without the woman ever having to see a doctor in person.
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Editor's note: This article was published by LifeNews.com and is reprinted with permission. Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News.
