Nine arrested for abortion

SURABAYA: Police have arrested nine people including a doctor and a midwife for allegedly conducting 397 abortions. Some of the women were pregnant by up to seven months, Antara reported.

The news agency quoted East Java Police Spokesman Lt. Col. Sutrisno T.S. as saying in a media briefing that police "discovered the practice on Wednesday at 11 a.m." Arrests were made immediately.

The nine were identified only as Dr. K.P., midwife S.D., broker P.W., a man called P.G. and his wife A.A., servant P.R., hospital employee M.S., whose job it was to seek out women wanting abortions, M.S.D., who buried the aborted fetuses, and S.W.T., who worked at Simokwagen cemetery.

Sutrisno said the practice opened in 1997 and was initially run from P.G.'s house and an unnamed hospital. Fees ranged from Rp 500,000 (US$71) to Rp 1.5 million, depending on how far gone the pregnancy was.

Police also confiscated medications, syringes, correspondence and receipts from a drug store that sold medicine without the necessary prescriptions.

One of the women who used the abortion service was P.G.'s girlfriend, Sutrisno said.