Bangalore: Sushma (name changed) lies on her hospital bed anaemic, owing to excessive blood loss and with nausea and pain. The ordeal she had to go through is because the "abortion pill" that she was given by her local doctor to end her pregnancy, was not administered in the right way.

The "abortion pill," which was introduced in India in 2002, has come as a boon to many women who do not want to go through a surgical procedure for medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) and is deemed an effective method of abortion, if administered properly.

But with some inexperienced medical professionals and a few quacks misusing it as a tool to make money, many women who opt for the pill are landing in hospitals owing to complications from the wrong way of administering the drug.

"One woman I examined in a government hospital had bleeding for 45 days and was severely anaemic. She was asked by a general practitioner to take four pills together without even conducting an ultrasound scan to check the age of the foetus," a consultant gynaecologist told The Hindu. The "abortion pill," which is a combination of mifepristone and misoprostol, causes abortion in the early stages of pregnancy.

Also known as RU486, it is an option for women who are eight weeks pregnant or less. During the first appointment at the clinic the woman gets to take the mifepristone pill.

Then 24 to 72 hours later, misoprostol is used in the privacy of her home, which results in miscarriage.

The medication is approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Guidelines

Global guidelines state that the pill should be administered after assessing the gestational age of the embryo and after ruling out ectopic pregnancy (when the embryo is outside the uterus).

According to Lata Venkataraman, president of the Bangalore Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, women are given the medication without first doing a preliminary check-up to know if she is anaemic and without undergoing an ultrasound scan. Chemists were doling out the pills to women without a prescription, so the chances of improper administration were higher. This also increased the chance of female foeticide, she said.

"I have come across incomplete abortions and septic abortions, especially in rural areas where the pill was not given in the proper dosage and method. General practitioners should be trained so that they can administer the pill as per the guidelines," Dr. Lata Venkataraman said.

But all medications had side-effects and cause problems, and this should not be used as an excuse to take away the women's freedom to have an abortion in privacy, said Kamini Rao, gynaecologist and former president of the Federation of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Societies of India.

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