A woman in India has reportedly committed suicide after being coerced into an abortion.
According to police, Sandu Kavya Sri, age 20, married her husband Sandu Srikantah two years ago, and together they welcomed a daughter, who is now 10 months old. Kavya Sri became pregnant a second time and was five months along when at the end of May, her husband took her for an ultrasound that revealed their second child was also a girl. She then decided to stay with her parents, but was pressured by her husband and his parents to undergo an abortion, because the child was not a boy.
Kavya Sri’s father, Errapothu Raja, told police that Srikantah and his parents took Kavya to the hospital multiple times while pressuring her to abort her baby. After the abortion was eventually carried out, Kavya Sri attempted to kill herself, and though her husband and parents found her and rushed her to a private hospital, she died while undergoing treatment there.
Research has long found a connection between induced abortion and depression. Though abortion advocates often cite the flawed Turnaway Study to argue that women are damaged when they are denied abortions, research shows that whether a baby is wanted or unwanted, women still have much higher risks of depression and suicidal ideation after abortion.
Jade Rees, a 21-year-old single mother in the UK, killed herself by hanging after her abortion. She had previously attempted to overdose twice in 48 hours. The Daily Mail reported, “Miss Rees left handwritten notes addressed to her parents and two-year-old son, explaining the struggle she had faced since the devastating procedure, in which she stressed that her little boy ‘means everything to me’.”
In 2022, it was reported that a woman in India hanged herself following 14 abortions, which a man she was in a relationship with coerced her to undergo.
A woman named Spring attempted suicide three times following her abortion. “Life after the abortion was awful,” she said. “I had instant remorse, guilt, and shame. I had a very difficult time functioning in everyday life. I had nightmares about the experience regularly. I fell into an extreme depression, and I was suicidal.”
Amy had an abortion after becoming pregnant from rape, because she was told it was the best thing for her to do. However, she was “heartbroken” following the abortion and began drinking heavily and abusing prescription drugs, both of which are behaviors that post-abortive women are more likely to experience. Amy also became suicidal. “I drank so much and took such a lot of painkillers in order that I wouldn’t wake up… ” she said. “Maybe if I even went to hell, that would be better than where I was at that time.”
Danielle, Nichole, and Jeanene also all attempted suicide after having an abortion, and sadly, teenager Ashli Blake and actress Charlotte Dawson both died by suicide after their abortions.
Research has shown that women who became pregnant and had abortions were six times more likely to commit suicide than women who had carried their pregnancies to term. In addition, women who aborted were three times more likely to commit suicide than women who had not been pregnant. Rather than increasing a woman’s chances of suicide, carrying a baby to term actually decreases them.
Another study had similar results, finding that women who had abortions were more likely to die within 10 years after their abortions than women who carried to term — with suicide being a common cause of death.
