Accused man thought abortion pills were legal
THE boyfriend of a teenager controversially charged with organising a home abortion said he thought it would be legal to bring abortion pills into the country.
In a police interview, Sergie Brennan, 21, said if it was illegal he wouldn’t have been able to get his sister in Ukraine to mail him the drugs.
"You know, they don’t get you off your face, they actually try to help you do things," Mr Brennan is quoted as saying in a transcript of the March 30 interview obtained by The Cairns Post.
"If they weren’t allowed in Queensland, I wouldn’t be able to receive them … they got through, so it should be all right."
The interview was conducted on the same day police raided the Mt Sheridan home of Mr Brennan and his girlfriend, Tegan Simone Leach, 19.
The police allegedly found empty packets of prescription-only abortion drugs mifolian, … a version of RU486, … and the expellent misoprostol in a bedroom cupboard.
The couple were then charged. Ms Leach with procuring an abortion, the first woman believed charged in about 50 years with the offence under a section of Queensland’s
century-old criminal code.
Mr Brennan was charged with supplying drugs to procure an abortion.
On Friday, the couple were committed to stand trial in the Cairns District Court at a date to be set.
In the police interview, the young couple told detectives they decided to abort their baby because they were not ready.
"I’m a young fella, you know, I want to give my kid the best when I have a kid but at the moment I don’t feel I can give them the best and that’s the way she feels too," Mr Brennan said, referring to Ms Leach.
In her interview, Ms Leach said: "I
suppose the reason I don’t want to have the child is cause I can’t even look after myself."
She said she discussed having an abortion with her sister but was put off by "the whole fact that, like, they stick something up you and suck it out".
Mr Brennan said doctors told his girlfriend that only surgical abortions were available in Cairns.
Drug-induced abortions using RU486 have been legally available in Cairns through
prescribing doctors since 2006.
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