Claude Mills, Staff ReporterWomen, desperate to terminate their pregnancies, are abusing a well-known ulcer medication to induce abortions, but in the process, are endangering their reproductive health.
"I understand that women are using Cytotec to effect abortions without the guidance of a doctor. With this pill, it is easy for women to believe they can self-medicate and this is a dangerous practice," Dr. Errol Daley, a gynaecologist, told The Sunday Gleaner last week.
"These women using the pill will not know what to expect and they can run into tremendous problems if they use too much of this pill, and complications increase the later the pregnancy," said Dr. Daley who says that he does not perform abortions.
He pointed out that studies by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology show that the pill is used in small amounts of 50 mcg in the U.S. to help induce labour.
"That 50 mcg is about one-quarter of a regular dose, but there are cases where some women are taking as much as one, two and sometimes four tablets, and they get tremendous side effects," he said.
The drug in question, Cytotec (misoprostol), is often prescribed by a doctor to reduce the chance of getting stomach ulcers from pain killers that a patient may be taking.
But according to a pamphlet published by the drug's manufacturers, G.D. Searle and Company, Cytotec has an abortifacient property which can cause miscarriages, and is often associated with potentially dangerous bleeding, which may result in "infertility, congenital anomalies and even death in women".
A doctor at the Victoria Jubilee Hospital concurred that the drug is dangerous, and that women were abusing it to effect abortions.
"A lot of women are coming to me saying they have heard of this abortion pill, Cytotec, and that they need it to do an abortion," he said.
According to the doctor, the likelihood of an abortion when the drug is taken orally is only 25 per cent, but the likelihood increases to 40 per cent when the pill is inserted vaginally.
"And even then, the doctor will need to monitor them afterwards to make sure that the abortion is complete," he warned.
"Botched" abortions often create medical problems associated with a perforated uterus, haemorrhage, infection and even damaged bowels. The infection might be due to the use of instruments not properly sterilised or because of products left in the uterus.
"In the 70s, and early 80s, women used coat hangers, or they would go to quacks who would shove a foleys catheter into their cervix, that would cause it to dilate but would also lead to infection, and a septic incomplete abortion," the doctor said.
According to data from the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based demographic research group, "every year, thousands of teens die as a result of unsafe abortions. Many more suffer from infection, haemorrhage, and infertility which may be particularly devastating."
Abortion is illegal in Jamaica, but the penal consequences do not deter women determined to terminate a pregnancy. Often, these women suffer a variety of complications due to abortions performed in unhygienic conditions.
According to a former nurse who is now working as a youth counsellor in Mandeville, there are many reasons for abortion, especially "ignorance and fear of abandonment by their partners, and lack of money among women who are single and have no one to help them support their offspring.
"The consequences of backstreet abortions are terrible. I've seen women with ruptured uterus because the abortion is often incomplete, they bleed and bleed, they get infections...and some end up doing a hysterectomy where the entire uterus is removed," the youth counsellor said.
