Police in New York City charged a 20 year-old woman with first-degree self-abortion after she allegedly used an herbal drink to terminate her pregnancy, and then dumping the fetus in the trash outside her apartment building.
The New York Times is reporting that Ms. Yaribely Almonte was charged last week with self-abortion, which is a misdemeanor in New York. The law states that a woman can be charged if she “commits or submits to an abortional act upon herself which causes her miscarriage” after 24 weeks unless a physician states an abortion is medically necessary to save her life.
The fetus was found by a superintendent in the Washington Heights building where Almonte lived. While tying up a garbage bag on Tuesday evening, he found a stray piece of plastic in a yellow bucket and reached into the bag to put it in the recycling bin.
“That’s when I saw the baby,” he said, and described finding a six to seven inch-long baby.
“When I found the baby, I didn’t know if it was real at first,” said the superintendent, who declined to give his name. “It was so bad. . . . After that happened, I just stayed in my apartment for a while because I didn’t feel well.”
Law enforcement officials said the fetus was male and still had the umbilical cord attached. No details about the motive were revealed.
“This woman has my sympathy,” Greg Pfundstein, executive director of the Chiaroscuro Foundation, an anti-abortion group, told the Times. “This appears to be a clear case of desperation. I wish she had known there are people who would have helped her through this, including the New York Catholic Archdiocese.”
The Archdiocese, he said, “recently renewed its pledge to help any woman who finds herself pregnant and in need.”
It is not clear what was in the herbal drink that Almonte ingested but, according to abortion advocates, home abortions with medications like misoprostol or herbal concoctions are a phenomenon in Latin American cultures. Women may choose to use these methods rather than avail themselves of surgical abortions because they don’t have the money to pay for the procedure.
Almonte could face up to a year in jail if convicted.
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