A Louisiana teenager and her baby survived after she was given abortion drugs without her consent and delivered the child at 23 weeks gestation, according to a June 13 statement from the Louisiana Baptist Message.
The organization said the 17-year-old girl from Carencro, Louisiana, was given abortion-inducing drugs by her father without her knowledge or consent. According to the press release, the baby was born alive weighing approximately one pound and remains hospitalized while receiving intensive medical care.
“Our hearts break for this young mother and her baby,” Erica Inzina, policy director for Louisiana Right to Life, said in the statement.
The life-threatening incident comes amid reports of increasing availability of abortion drugs nationwide. As Zeale News previously reported, pro-life advocates have recently raised concerns that expanded access to abortion pills through telehealth and mail-order prescriptions has increased the risk of women being pressured to take the drugs or receiving them without their knowledge or consent.
Inzina said the incident highlights what she described as a growing concern surrounding abortion drugs and their potential misuse when obtained outside of direct medical supervision.
“When these substances are freely available and deliberately detached from medical oversight, they become tools for abusers, traffickers, and predators seeking to exert control over the vulnerable,” she said.
Inzina emphasized the dignity of every human life, in particular, pre-born children.
“No child,” she said, “should ever suffer because someone else decided that his or her life was disposable.”