Are there repercussions for failed abortions? Are there any links between deformities in newly born babies and attempts made by their mothers to terminate them in their foetal stages. Medinat Kanabe explores the possibilities.
Mrs Akintoye’s youngest daughter was one year and eight months old, when she got pregnant again. her husband had however told her he didn’t want another child until their daughter was three years old. This new pregnancy therefore put her in a dilemma. He told her point-blank that she must remove it, but being too scared of going to a hospital for an evacuation, she decided to take some drugs and concoction to flush out the unwanted foetus.
“I took the drugs and soon stopped feeling pregnant. I actually started my menstruation again, which was a relief. But less than five months after, I got pregnant again. So this time, I didn’t bother to tell my husband, since I felt I already knew the solution to my problem. I just went and took the drugs and concoctions, but this time, the pregnancy didn’t go away. I continued taking the drug until I saw my period one day and was relieved. I however bled for six days instead of the normal 3-4 days. But the feeling of being pregnant didn’t go away. I decided to wait for my next period but it never came until my tummy started to protrude and the evidence of pregnancy could not be hidden or removed anymore.
“Hubby was angry but couldn’t do anything but support me. I went into labour and had my child but I was shocked when the doctors told me the child would not be normal. They said he has microcephalus, a medical condition in which the brain does not develop properly, resulting in the child having a smaller than normal head circumference.
Esther on her part got pregnant a few months before her wedding. She however didn’t want to look fat and bloated in her already ordered wedding gown, so she decided to remove the pregnancy by taking some drugs given to her by a friend.
After taking the drugs, she bled a little during her menstruation and thought the foetus had come down. Unknown to her, the pregnancy progressed until she could not do anything about it. After nine months, she delivered the baby in a government hospital in Lagos with abnormalities. The child’s eyes were damaged beyond repair.
Angela was however lucky. She was brought into the hospital by her boyfriend, writhing in pains. She needed to go through an urgent evacuation to clean her womb of the remnant of a foetus she tried to remove. As she was being wheeled into the theatre she began to curse her boyfriend: “If anything happens to me, I will not forgive you; I told you I don’t want to drink that lime liquid but you forced me. I could have carried the child and have it without you in my life.”
She was in the hospital for two days before the doctors discharged her with a warning never to take any such thing ever again, else she or her baby (if he does not come down), suffers a serious repercussion.
Cases like those of Mrs Akintoye, Esther and Angela abound; even in worse doses of repercussion. Many new born babies grow up with ailments literally forced on them by insensibility of their mothers. True they mostly would not be able to say it openly, but they suffer an unending sense of guilt and pain deep inside them. They regret their actions, but unfortunately cannot turn back the hands of the clock.
A paediatrician, Dr Henry Ayanbolu of the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospital in an interview, explained that defects in children is any abnormality, usually structural or functional, which is seen at birth. He said the three major causes of defect in children are environmental, genetic or the ones that are multi-factorial; that is, a combination of various factors that cannot be placed purely on genetic or environmental.
According to him, things that pregnant women ingest can cause their children to have defects when they are born.
“Generally, the defects of which a large number of them are environmental arise from drugs that are unsafe. The drugs can be orthodox or non- orthodox. For instance, people that consume tetracycline, anti-hypertensive; or anti-convulsant (for people that are epileptic); when they are on those drugs and get pregnant, they may not know that they are pregnant and continue on those drugs which can affect the child.”
He said defects can also be caused by nutritional deficiencies in the mother. “One thing we have to know is that there is a critical window of period that the mother is mostly prone to having a baby with defect, and that is between the third to eight weeks of gestation. This is the embryonic stage and the unfortunate thing is that, during that period, a lot of mothers don’t know that they are pregnant. Defects can still happen outside that time, but that is the critical window. By the eighth weeks, people become conscious of their conditions, so they are more careful of what they take. Eight weeks to when the baby is born is the foetal period and damage can still be done, but not as much as the early period, which is the embryonic period when the major organs are being formed.”
Asked if attempted abortion can cause defects in children and how, he said many failed abortions lead to defects, especially when the mother injests local medicines or herbs.
“Some combination of the herbs includes things like alabukun (powder), lime orange and ogogoro. Alcohol can injure a baby at any period of pregnancy because it can deform the heart, the bones, the face; various parts of the body. Alcohol, in any form is very bad for the baby and many of those herbs that these women use to commit abortion are made with alcohol. Why they go for those herbs is because they are widely available and sales are not regulated. Some of the sellers also use canfor because it adds a flavour that makes the herbs hot; so most of the time, especially the herbs for jedi and the ones that are used to purge things from the system contain canfor.
“There are also some other things that are added like potash, which many women use to cook. It has been banned in the US by FDA (Food and Drugs Administration), because they discover that people import it raw and sell to blacks as it is a common remedy amongst blacks. It is believed to help in evacuating the baby in abortion but they found that it contains a high level of dangerous lead and arsenic, which are dangerous chemicals that can affect babies.”
Dr Ayanbolu further explained that “When the women take these herbs and drugs and the babies are not successfully aborted, they come with various forms of defects when they finally arrive. And usually, when their mothers discover this, they end up dumping them. This is why many of the abandoned babies have one form of defect or the other.
“Deformities that can happen from failed abortion include facial anomalies which includes cleft lips, heart defects, congenital heart defects, microcephalus, caused mostly by alcohol used to mix herbs and mental retardation.”
Dr Ayanbolu insisted that these herbs can also affect the mother in many ways, as a number of them can affect the mother’s kidney. “They take it in very high dose, which may lead to heavy bleeding. The ones with local tobacco can affect the brain and heart of the mother.”
He called on churches to be lenient with pregnant members, to avoid things like this. “Some of these ladies have lost their lives, which is increasing our cases of maternal and child mortality.”
