Police arrested a Texas mother this month after she was accused of trying to force her pregnant daughter to take abortion pills to kill her unborn grandchild.
Where Juana Idalia Sanchez, 49, of Laredo, Texas, allegedly obtained the abortion pills is not mentioned in reports, but pro-life advocates have been warning about the increased risk of forced abortions ever since the Biden administration began allowing abortion pills to be sold through the mail.
The Laredo Morning Times reports Laredo police said they arrested Sanchez on charges of assaulting a pregnant woman after her 16-year-old daughter said Sanchez tried to force her to take abortion pills.
On April 2, police said officers responded to a domestic disturbance at the family’s home and the teenage girl told them about the attempted forced abortion.
Here’s more from the report:
[The] 16-year-old female stated that she informed her mother on March 30 that she was pregnant. Police identified the mother as Sanchez.
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Her mother got upset and asked her to have an abortion. She stated that her mother chased her around the home causing her to fall on her stomach, states an arrest affidavit.
Sanchez pinned her to the floor to try to force her daughter to ingest pills that would induce an abortion. Sanchez managed to shove the pills in her mouth, but the daughter spit them out, authorities said.
Texas law protects unborn babies by banning elective abortions, but some pro-abortion groups have been mailing abortion pills there illegally and others have been smuggling them across the Mexico border.
In late 2021, the Biden administration made it easier to buy abortion drugs without ever seeing a doctor when the FDA threw out vital safety regulations and began allowing them to be sold through the mail.
Mail-order abortion businesses also make it easier for abusive parents, partners and sex traffickers to force women to abort their unborn babies. Studies show a strong link between coercion, abuse and abortion, and without an in-person visit, it is even more difficult for abortionists to screen women for abuse.
A recent BBC survey found 15 percent of women of childbearing age in the UK felt pressured to have abortions that they did not want.
Speaking with the BBC about the survey, Winnie Porter, a midwife at the abortion chain MSI Reproductive Choices (formerly Marie Stopes International), admitted that many abortion workers have a “blind spot” when it comes to recognizing coercion. Porter also said she sees many women who feel pressured into abortions.
That pressure can come from employers, social workers, partners, parents or human traffickers. Coercion sometimes is coupled with abuse, and both mothers and their babies are abused and sometimes killed because the mother resisted pressure to have an abortion.
A 2014 study, “Associations Between Intimate Partner Violence and Termination of Pregnancy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis,” published in the journal “PLOS Medicine,” found that intimate partner violence, including history of rape, sexual assault, contraception sabotage and coerced decision-making, was associated with abortion.
Another study by the Elliot Institute found a high rate of coerced and forced abortions among post-abortive women, as high as 64 percent.
Notably, a number of states have laws to protect women from abortion coercion. In 2022, Indiana passed a law to make sure abortion facilities inform women that coerced abortions are illegal and offer her resources, including the use of a telephone or an alternative exit from the facility to help escape a potential abuser. It also creates felony charges for anyone who coerces a woman into an abortion.
Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion chain in the U.S., opposed the legislation, calling it “redundant” and “dangerous.”
