How botched abortions are taking a deadly toll in India

A 15-year-old’s recent death from abortion pills in TN shows how social taboos force women to rely on unscrupulous backstreet quacks

- Himanshi Dhawan

In October last year Samiksha*, a class 10 Delhi student, went to get her phone recharged. The mobile shop owner Dharmender took her number and started stalking her. Over the next couple of months, he allegedly raped her repeatedly, blackmailing her into silence. When she got pregnant, Dharmender allegedly took her to a seedy clinic in Narela where the 14-year-old was given some abortion pills by a quack and sent home. But a few days later, she started complaining of severe pain and excessive bleeding. Her worried parents took her to a government hospital where doctors found that the minor was suffering from incomplete abortion.

Medical Termination of Pregnancy or MTP act legalised abortion over 50 years ago but lack of awareness and stigma around the procedure has lingered on, leading to a proliferation of backstreet abortions by quacks, home remedies like papaya skin and herbs, and indiscriminate use of abortion pills. Unsafe abortions are the third leading cause of maternal deaths in the country. Just this week, a 15-year-old girl, who had been raped by a distant relative, died in Tamil Nadu after taking abortion pills doled out by a quack that the rapist had taken her to.