A sheer act of desperation has left a distraught mother in a foreign land, emotionally wrecked and possibly facing criminal charges after she allegedly resorted to aborting her unborn child, a whole eight months into her pregnancy.
Close friend, confidante to the mother and resident of Brown Street, Serena Moosa, shared with Laudium Sun journalists the details of the tragic story which has shocked nearby residents, after a lifeless, bloodied foetus was found in a trash can, on Brown Street last Friday, April 6.
“I had become close friends with a 25-year-old Zimbabwean national named Salabisicah. We call her Sala. She was a nice person and the mother of two little boys. Last year, Sala discovered she was pregnant with her third child. As far as I could see, she was happy about this. She told me she wanted a girl this time round, adding that she had yet to break the news to her boyfriend. When she eventually did tell him, she told me that he wasn't very happy about it at all. He wasn't a very pleasant person and always fought with Sala,” Serena related. Sala’s shocked friend continued, “The boyfriend threatened to leave Sala if she chose to have the baby and said he would not support the child. I remember her coming to me one day after all this, crying that her boyfriend had left her because she was still pregnant. I counseled her as best as I could and told her to keep the baby no matter the circumstances. She promised that she would and remained healthy and unstressed for the months that followed,” Serena said. But, to Serena and other shocked community members’ surprise, a drastic turn of events occured.
Serena detailed, “Then on Friday, I had just finished cooking and cleaning and was exiting my house with a refuse bag in my hand to throw away. It was around 12:30pm. I then saw a crowd, together with the Laudium SAPS, gathered on the roadside of Mustard Street, where nearby residents usually disposed their bin bags. I ran over to see what was going on. Those people who were already there informed me that a vagrant who had been rummaging through the bin bags, had just discovered a dead foetus. I began to wonder where on earth this ‘child’ could have come from and then I remembered that I hadn't seen Sala in weeks. I began to fear the worst. The police removed the foetus and I was told a case would be opened against the perpetrator,” Serena said.
The next day, Serena's worst fears materialised when she received a phone call from her friend, Sala.
“Over the phone, Sala told me she was in a lot of pain and needed help because she thought she was dying. I immediately ran over to her place. There I discovered her lying in a pool of blood. I called for an ambulance and she was rushed to Kalafong Hospital. I then asked Sala what happened to the baby. She said to me that she thought she had a ‘miscarriage’. I asked her, where the baby was, but Sala refused to give me an answer. She just sobbed. The doctors sedated her because the pain was too much. And I was devastated, because Sala’s response indicated to me that it was she who dumped her baby in that trash can. I left the hospital heartbroken. I wondered how she could have done something so awful. She could have given the baby away to someone who wanted to adopt him and not just kill him. That baby boy deserved to live. I suspect she drank something extremely strong for an 8 month old foetus to be aborted like this and not survive,” said the teary Serena.
“I have chosen to speak out to the Laudium Sun about this because the father of this aborted baby needs to know how horrifically his actions have affected his girlfriend. Society needs to come down on men and women like this who resort to such drastic measures to avoid taking responsibility for their actions. Instead of abandoning Sala, her boyfriend should have stood by her, then maybe she wouldn’t have resorted to this, ” Serena concluded emotionally.
The Laudium Sun approached Sala to hear her side of the story, but she flatly refused to comment on the matter. Her boyfriend was nowhere to be found.
The dumping site where a foetus was allegedly discarded by a distraught girlfriend.
Serena Moosa emotionally related the abortion story to the Laudium Sun.
Sala refused to comment on the abortion allegations.