A 33-year-old woman in Bengaluru died on Tuesday after consuming an abortion pill, police said on Wednesday. The woman has been identified as Priti Kushwaha who worked as a sales manager at an e-commerce firm in the city, said police.
According to the police, Kushwaha took a pregnancy test at her home in New Mico Layout on Saturday and it turned out to be positive.” She did not want to have another child as her son was just 11-month-old,” said police.
When she asked her husband Devbrath Kushwaha, who works as a software engineer in Bengaluru, to get her abortion pills, he suggested that they visit a hospital and get an abortion, police said.
Around 8:30 pm on Monday, she called her husband, who was out on walk and told him that “she was bleeding”, police said. “When he returned home, she told him that she took abortion pills, following which her husband suggested to visit the hospital, however, she refused to see a doctor,” police said.
The husband then informed her brother Navneet Sambhav about the incident and he also asked her to seek medical help, but she refused the same.
In the wee hours of Tuesday, the woman lost consciousness and was rushed to hospital, where she was declared dead, the police said. Begur police have registered a case under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code but her family does not suspect any foul play, the police said.
Meanwhile, doctors stressed that abortion pills should never be taken without the supervision of a medical professional.
“Taking pills over the counter is extremely unsafe and can be life threatening also,” said a doctor.
“The reason for supervision is because there is a protocol to know how many weeks pregnant a woman is and if the pregnancy is confirmed. There could be a chance of an ectopic pregnancy which means the pregnancy is in the fallopian tube or elsewhere, like in the ovary. In these situation, these tablets will not work,” said Dr Hemanandini Jayaraman, consultant, obstetrics and gynaecology, Manipal Hospital Old Airport Road.
“One might not know the difference and could land in a complication which could lead to heavy internal bleeding… it can lead to low haemoglobin, and sometimes the person can even enter a state of hypovolemic shock”.
Hypovolemic shock is an emergency condition in which severe blood or other fluid loss makes the heart unable to pump enough blood to the body.
“If the pregnancy is beyond seven weeks, which is the cut-off for taking the abortion pill and the woman is unsure… and hasn’t done an ultrasound or is confused with the dates, then the foetus will not get aborted with the pill. It will be an incomplete job and the woman may continue to bleed for many days. That could also lead to a lot of complications and might need hospitalisation,” she said.
“However, if a woman takes an abortion pill for some reason, and then realises that it’s a mistake, she could still reach out to a doctor immediately,” Dr Jayaraman said.
“Abortion pills do not have 100% success rates,” Dr Shafalika SB, Consultant, Minimally Invasive Gynecology, Manipal Hospital Yeshwanthpur and Hebbal, said.
“The abortion pills should always be prescribed by a gynaecologist or a registered medical practitioner, making sure the pregnancy is within 12 weeks and by doing an ultrasound showing the pregnancy is only within the uterus,” she added.