Mumbai: Abortion gone wrong, family moves court

Mumbai: A tragedy has occurred in the life of 26-year-old Deepa Yashwant, who remembers having aborted her child in June at the Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital, (Sion).  However, on December 11, Deepa gave birth at Nair Hospital to her third child, whom they named ‘Magic’. Since the boy survived a medical abortion, the family thought it the most befitting to name him ‘Magic’.

Deepa distinctly remembers going to the doctors six months ago and aborting the same child. She underwent a tubectomy (nasbandi) surgery to stop pregnancies in the future. The birth of Magic thus came as a shock to her entire family. The parents have filed a complaint in the consumer court and written to the Chief Minister’s office for the gross medical negligence. This abortion gone wrong risked the lives of both the child and mother.

A senior doctor said according to her reports, it is proven that the abortion was unsuccessful or else, she wouldn’t have been able to deliver her third child on her eighth month of pregnancy. The parents have named the first son as Magic considering his impossible journey of survival in his mother’s womb.

As per the sonography reports, it shows that she is carrying a child of around 21 weeks and the estimated date of delivery (EDD) of the pregnancy is January 22, 2018. On Monday, when she developed labour pain, a month prior to her delivery date, she was rushed to BYL Nair hospital. But the doctors gave a red signal as she had developed complications. The kidney’s of the child had swollen, stopping the blood circulation.

Deepa, who is already a mother of two daughters, 4-year-old and 6-year-old, did not want to give birth to a third child as the two consecutive deliveries took a toll on her health. Also, the family is not economically strong to take care of another child. Her husband, Yashwant Kadam, earns only Rs 8,000 a month.

On June 12, she got admitted at Sion hospital where doctors performed her termination and she also underwent tubectomy to stop further pregnancy. “On May of this year, we found that she is pregnant with a third child and we decided to abort it,” said Yashwant. However, after two months, she realised that the abortion was unsuccessful and she was still carrying the baby. As it was too late to abort the child according to Medical Termination Act, she was left with no option but to carry the child.