Teenager faces seven years in prison for RU486

A teenager faces seven years in prison after being ordered to stand trial for organising her own home abortion in the first such prosecution in Australia in over half a century.

Tegan Leach, 19, from the north Queensland city of Cairns, was committed to trial today in Cairns District Court. Her boyfriend, Sergie Brennan, 21, who has been charged with supplying drugs to procure an abortion, faces three years in jail.

The court heard that police found empty pharmaceutical blister packets alleged to have contained contraband abortion drugs obtained in Ukraine, along with a Russian doctor's instructions, during a search of the couple's Cairns home in relation to another matter in February.

Police allege that Ms Leach took the drugs, a Chinese version of the abortion pill RU486, to induce a miscarriage because she and her partner believed that they were too young to raise a child.

Prosecutor Sergeant Peter Austin told the court that Ms Leach's admission to having used the drugs to induce an abortion was sufficient for the matter to be put to trial

The case has caused controversy in Queensland, and polarised the debate on abortion in Australia, under whose Victorian-era laws it remains a crime in most states including Queensland.

So heated has the debate become that Ms Leach and her boyfriend have been forced into hiding after their home was fire-bombed and Mr Brennan's car was attacked.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article6830145.ece