A woman in Texas has been arrested after she physically forced abortion pills into her teenage daughter’s mouth in an attempt to abort her own grandchild.
Police were called to a Laredo home, where a 16-year-old girl identified her mother, Juana Idalia Sanchez, as the assailant in a violent altercation. According to the Laredo Morning Times, the girl told Sanchez on March 30 that she was pregnant. Her mother demanded that she get an abortion, and began chasing her around the apartment, intentionally making her fall onto her stomach.
Sanchez eventually was able to pin her daughter onto the ground and then forced abortion pills into her mouth. Her daughter was able to spit them out, but when she tried to flee the home, her mother pulled her back inside by her bra strap and continued to beat her.
No information has been given about how Sanchez obtained the abortion pills.
Coerced abortions are incredibly common. Research has found that as many as 64% of women reported being pressured into abortion, while abortion staffers seemingly look the other way at potential coercion.
Winnie Porter, a midwife with the abortion chain MSI Reproductive Choices — formerly Marie Stopes — told the BBC that coercion is a typical part of the job… and that many people ignore it.
“I hear the same things and I hear the same techniques that people are using to try and coerce women into having abortions, into not having abortions, into having contraception that they don’t want,” she said, adding, “I’d say it’s almost a bit of a blind spot for a lot of services. It is so subtle that it almost doesn’t appear, you almost don’t notice it and it’s only through really kind of questioning what’s going on in that woman’s life when you start to understand that this very specific type of control is happening.”
For young girls, coercion often comes from their parents; some, like Sanchez, are violent. Other parents have threatened their daughters with homelessness if they refuse to have an abortion.
