A man from Ontario, Canada has been found guilty of murdering his pregnant girlfriend who refused to abort their unborn child.
Wazhir Gafoor was found guilty of first-degree murder this month in a case of abortion coercion. The body of his girlfriend, Christina Yadram, was found in woodland in 2021, and DNA found on the scene was traced back to him.
Law enforcement concluded that the homicide, which also killed Ms Yadram’s unborn child, was motivated by her refusal to have an abortion.
Mr Gafoor was married with four children but was having an affair with Ms Yadram with whom he already had a child. But when she was pregnant again, he kept referring to the unborn baby as a “parasite” and told her, “I just want it dead and gone and I just want to be with you.”
It was later found that Mr Gafoor had researched how to force a woman to have an abortion.
Following the guilty verdict, Mr Gafoor was given a life sentence of at least 25 years.
Last year, Filmon Andmichaen 31, was sentenced to a minimum term of 27 years after being found guilty of murdering his girlfriend and her unborn baby in Birmingham on 1 August 2023.
Mr Andmichaen stabbed Liwam Bereket, 26, when she was 27 weeks pregnant. She had refused to have an abortion.
Prosecutor Sandip Patel KC told the jury that Mr Andmichaen “decided the life growing inside his girlfriend was a complication he was unwilling to accept… His solution to this was a permanent one.”
A peer-reviewed study published in 2023 reported that almost 70% of women who had an abortion felt they’d been coerced or that the abortion was unwanted and inconsistent with their values.
Tessa Longbons, who co-authored the study, said: “We tend to think of abortion coercion in countries with oppressive regimes like China. In fact, this shocking hidden epidemic is happening all around us.”
In 2022, a poll of British adult women found that 15% of respondents had experienced pressure or coercion to have an abortion that they did not want.
A Savanta Comres poll conducted on behalf of SPUC in 2021 reported that more than eight in ten GPs (86%) were concerned that women were being put at risk of being coerced into an abortion by a partner or family member because of the DIY abortion scheme introduced in 2020.
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