Holon hospital saves life and womb

Doctors come to the rescue after infection spreads throughout body of woman who underwent illegal abortion at home.

By JUDY SIEGEL
Hospital bed (photo credit: Wikicommons)
Hospital bed
(photo credit: Wikicommons)
The life of a woman in her 20s was saved two weeks ago at Wolfson Medical Center after an illegal abortion allegedly performed in her home by another woman without medical credentials led to a dangerous infection.
The Holon hospital managed to save her uterus and her fertility by treating her sepsis intensively with large doses of antibiotics.
Prof. Avraham Golan, head of the obstetrics and gynecology department said on Tuesday that he does not remember ever seeing such a case in his 30-year career.
The woman who underwent the illegal abortion was in her sixth or seventh week of pregnancy. The hospital said that the abortion was not performed under sterile conditions, thus giving her a severe infection that spread through her body.
“We struggled for her life and her womb, and didn’t let up for a moment,” said Golan, who added that tissue from the fetus that remained in the womb after the abortion was removed in the hospital.
Abortions are approved by hospital committees if the woman is below 18 or above 40, if the pregnancy resulted from illegal relations or to an unmarried couple, if the fetus would endanger the mother’s physical and mental condition or if the fetus was not normal. The woman apparently did not receive authorization for a legal abortion.
Wolfson Medical Center, a government-owned hospital, reported the case to the Health Ministry and the Israel Police. Wolfson’s own public abortion committee last year approved 241 abortions and in the whole country, 97 percent were approved by such committees, leading to over 21,000 legal abortions.
The Health Ministry was asked to comment on what action would be taken to identify and punish the woman who performed the abortion, but the ministry spokeswoman did not reply to the question.