The Middlesex District Attorney, Marian Ryan, said that a guy from Brookline is accused of giving his pregnant ex-girlfriend an abortion drug while telling her it was iron.
Robert Kawada, 43, of Brookline was charged with poisoning with the goal to kill or hurt on Tuesday in Waltham District Court. He was also charged with assault and battery. He said he wasn’t guilty and was given $100,000 cash bail with rules about who he could talk to and where he could go.
Middlesex County Prosecutor Jacob McCrindle said, “The victim would have pain, cramps, and vaginal discharges on several occasions, which worried her.”
The government thinks that those side effects were caused by taking Misoprostol. A manufactured prostaglandin, the drug is often used for medical abortions, sometimes by itself and sometimes with a progesterone blocker called Mifepristone. Misoprostol works less well when taken by itself. At first, the “iron” pills did not cause abortions, according to the government.
“After that, the victim went to a doctor’s appointment about the pregnancy, and the doctors told her the heartbeat was strong and stable, so there was no need to worry,” McCrindle said.
According to the authorities, the victim said she got a call from a number that seemed to be from a nurse for her medical provider.
The “nurse” told the victim that her blood tests showed she had Iron Deficiency Anemia, which is a typical problem for pregnant women. McCrindle said that she prescribed iron pills and gave clear guidelines on how to take them.
That’s when the victim took her first “iron” pill. No one knows how many she took, but she said Kawada told her to take them buccally, which means between the jaw and the cheek. This way of giving Misoprostol causes blood levels to rise slowly, which keeps side effects to a minimum. That being said, this way makes the uterus contract very hard.
McCrindle said that while Kawada was there, the “nurse” called back and told the victim to take two more pills.
That night, the victim had terrible cramps and chills. She lost the baby. Following talks with family, she called the cops and gave them one of the tablets Kawada said was iron.
Kawada told the police that he had bought nutritional tablets from Amazon and given them to his ex-girlfriend. But then they looked at his phone. According to court records, Kawada made some calls that could be used against him, including one to that “nurse.” He also did a dozen searches on the Internet that might have been related to the case, some of which were about the effects of misoprostol.
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