In the latest brutal example of a pregnant woman being forced to consume abortion pills against her will, a former West Point cadet and current Columbia University graduate student has been sued by his former girlfriend for assaulting her with the drugs while she was incapacitated, resulting in the death of her unborn child. Experts are pointing to how the unregulated and widely available drugs are being exploited not just by criminals on the margins of society but by men in the military and in the medical field.

A woman identified as “Jane Doe” filed the lawsuit in New York Supreme Court on October 28 against former Army cadet Caleb T. Suh, who has entered a guilty plea to felony assault after being charged with the crime in federal court in June. According to the suit and plea, both Doe and Suh were cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point when Doe became pregnant in January 2022. Despite repeated demands from Suh that she abort the baby, even threatening “to commit suicide if she did not terminate the pregnancy,” Doe made her intentions clear that she would keep the child.

Suh subsequently appeared to support the pregnancy, but in the meantime stole Doe’s identity in order to establish a fraudulent online pharmacy account in her name, which he used to obtain the abortion pills. He also obtained the sedatives Xanax and Promethazine. According to the lawsuit, he crushed up the sedatives and mixed them into a shake that he told Doe was a “special pregnancy protein powder” shake. On February 4, 2022, Suh brought the drink to Doe’s barracks room, where she consumed it and was overcome by drowsiness and went in and out of consciousness. It was then that “Suh shoved abortion pills into Ms. Doe’s vagina and in her mouth.”

Hours later, she “became seriously ill and was taken to a hospital, where doctors confirmed she was suffering a miscarriage.” Doe reported the incident to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division at West Point in May of 2022. Suh was charged in federal court in June, eventually pleading guilty to assault. All the while, he enrolled at Cornell University, where he graduated in May and then enrolled in Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health master’s program. Spokespersons for both schools say that they were not aware of Suh’s conviction since he did not disclose the information in his application.

Suh’s crime marks the second known case of an expectant mother in the military being forced to ingest abortion pills against her will by a fellow soldier. In June, Army Captain Brandon Jones-Adams pled guilty to domestic violence and other charges after he crushed up abortion pills into a drink and gave it to his pregnant girlfriend without her knowledge, which resulted in the death of her unborn child.

The horrifying incidents appear to be occurring with greater frequency over the last two years, as mifepristone abortion pills have become increasingly easy to obtain online through fraudulent means after the Biden administration removed the in-person dispensing requirement from a licensed physician in December 2021, a rule that the Trump administration has left in place to the shock of the pro-life movement. According to a tracking site compiled by Pregnancy Help News, there have been at least 23 documented cases of expectant mothers being poisoned by abortion pills without their knowledge or consent. Suh’s crime would be the 24th case.

Notably, 15 of the 23 cases have happened in the last four years — the years in which the in-person dispensing requirement was removed. In addition, several of the crimes have been committed by medical professionals, including Ohio physician Hassan Abbas, Virginia physician Sikander Imran, and Washington state nurse practitioner David Coots, in addition to Texas attorney Mason Herring and the aforementioned military servicemembers. Experts like Family Research Council President Tony Perkins say that these cases suggest that the escalating issue of forced abortion pill poisonings “is not happening on the periphery of society” but is moving into its institutions.

As has been noted in a U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief filed by FRC, these cases illustrate that the lack of regulations surrounding the abortion pill is facilitating the efforts of men who commit intimate partner violence against the mothers of their unborn children with the goal of snuffing out their lives before they are born.

“Horrific acts of abuse like this one have been enabled by the federal government’s inaction regarding the abortion drug crisis,” Joy Stockbauer, a policy analyst for FRC’s Center for Human Dignity, told The Washington Stand. “We’re living in the Wild West of abortion drugs, where anyone could decide to kill a mother’s unborn child against her will by slipping her these drugs, which are pathetically easy to access online. Mothers shouldn’t have to live in constant fear and vigilance for the lives of their unborn children. How many instances of forced abortion must take place before the Trump administration does something about it?”