Source: http://www.gmanews.tv

28.08.2008     MANILA, Philippines – Government agents arrested an 82-year-old woman, her granddaughter, along with four other persons for allegedly performing abortion on five women in Caloocan City using a chemical for removing nail cuticles.

NBI Director Nestor Mantaring presented the suspects to media on Thursday, two days after being caught in an entrapment operation.

Arrested by the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) were Catalina Jose and granddaughter Anna Tolentino, both residents of Bagong Silang, Caloocan.

Also arrested as accomplices were Merlinda Paralisan, Perfecta Hopia Mahinay, Violeta Marco, and Benjie Cantuba.

The NBI also took in five other women, the suspects' clients, for questioning but refused to reveal their names.

The suspects denied using the cuticle remover as an abortifacient. They said it was only used to as a vaginal cleanser.

But Arnel Dalumpines, chief of the NBI Special Task Force, doubted this, saying: "The cuticle remover has been placed in syringes, how can that be used to cleanse the vagina?"

The complaint against the suspects was filed by a father whose daughter died going through an abortion with them.

The NBI then set up an entrapment operation. An agent posed as a pregnant woman and went to Paralisan, a vendor in Novaliches, Quezon City. She was offered some Cytotec, a brand name for misoprostil, a drug used primarily to prevent stomach ulcers but which some women reportedly use to induce abortion.

But the agent the drug did not have any effect on her. Paralisan then referred the agent to Tolentino.

The agent paid the woman P12,000 in marked bills. Agents nabbed the woman as soon as she had taken the money.

At the clinic, they seized several bottles of cuticle remover, instrument used for abortion, and two dead fetuses in a pouch bag.

"Three women had finished going through an abortion while the two others were in line," Dalumpines said.

The five clients, two of them now confined at Philippine General Hospital, were invited for questioning.

Mantaring said that Tolentino had previously been arrested and charged for intentional abortion. She posted bail. She has another arrest warrant for the same crime. - GMANews.TV