In South Korea, a doctor apparently mistook two women for an abortion. According to media reports, the police are investigating the doctor because he ended her pregnancy without the consent of a patient.
To the momentous confusion in the district Gangseo of the capital Seoul it came to the transmitter CNN according to several errors - among other things it had given problems with the identification of the woman. Against the attending physician and a nurse will now be determined, the police said.
"The doctor and the nurse have acknowledged their negligence," a policeman told the transmitter. The two would now have to answer for negligent assault. According to South Korean media, patient records had been confused.
The mistake was noticed the next day
The nurse had put the woman in anesthesia, without clarifying her identity again, reported the South Korean news agency Yonhap. Even the doctor did not verify the identity before he performed the abortion. The incident took place at the beginning of August.
When the then pregnant woman, a Vietnamese woman, visited the clinic, she was told, according to "Korean Herald", that she needed an infusion - instead, she was anesthetized. When she returned to the hospital one day later due to bleeding, she was told that her fetus had been aborted.
In South Korea, abortions are so far only legal in exceptional cases, such as in medical emergencies or pregnancies as a result of rape. Women who are aborted face imprisonment of up to one year. Doctors performing the procedure can be punished with up to two years in prison.
In April, the Constitutional Court called on Parliament to ease the 66-year-old abortion bill by the end of next year in a way that would make early-stage abortion possible.