Authorities raid clinic committing illegal abortions

Authorities in India have reportedly raided a medical facility in Wazirabad where they allegedly found a number of tools and instruments used to commit illegal abortions.

Key Takeaways:

• Authorities in India raided an optical and dental store that was allegedly illegally committing abortions.
• The owner of the store was reportedly in the process of committing an abortion at the time of the raid, and is still on the run.
• Abortion is allowed in India, but sex-selective abortions are prohibited.

The Details:

According to the Indian Express, officials in the health department of Gurgaon district, India, raided Abha Homoeo Optical and Dental Hygiene last week after learning that it was illegally selling “abortion kits” and committing abortions without a valid medical license.

“A search of the premises uncovered MTP kits and surgical instruments used for pregnancy termination stored in a blue plastic drum at the back of the store. No MTP registration or retail/wholesale drug licence was found. The seizure was videographed, and the recovered MTP kit strips confirmed their use on the premises for performing abortions,” a spokesperson for the district administration said in a statement.

“Inside, we found a blue drum filled with medical abortion kits, including 10 unopened packs containing Mifepristone and Misoprostol, two partly used kits, and one used kit. Speculums, dilators, and curettes were also recovered,” a health official said, according to the Times of India.

The store’s owner, Nani Sarkar, fled the scene at the time of the raid and has not yet been apprehended. Two other men who were inside the store at the time told authorities that Sarkar had been in the process of committing an illegal abortion before he fled the premises.

“The clinic had no MTP registration or drugs license, and the man running it was only a certified dispensing optician,” officials said.

Why it Matters:

According to the Times of India, abortion is legal in India for many reasons, but sex-selective abortion is prohibited. The country, and particularly the state where this “store” is located, is a region where abortions have been prevalent among people who would prefer to have baby boys instead of girls. One paper published in 2021 found that an estimated that 13.5 million or more baby girls were aborted in sex-selective abortions in India between 1987 and 2016.

Although authorities haven’t offered a motive for why Sarkar was committing illegal abortions, The Times of India says authorities in the region try to crack down on illegal abortion rings in order to fight the gender imbalance.

The Bottom Line:

Abortion — whether legally or illegally committed — is never a safe option for the woman or her preborn baby. As reports out of the United States demonstrate, women are routinely injured at facilities that have the full backing of the law, though many of those stories are often kept from the public’s eye. If women are regularly harmed in abortion facilities, they are all the more at risk in clinics that have no medical standing at all.

A procedure in which a woman’s health is jeopardized, while her child is killed, is never safe.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]