NEWARK, Ohio — An Ohio woman and her boyfriend are both facing an involuntary manslaughter charge after their newborn son was found deceased in a shoebox. It is alleged that the mother ingested pills to personally induce labor and end the child’s life as the couple, who have one child together, did not want a second baby.
Kaline Gillum, 21 and Braden Mull, 25, appeared in court on Monday after being indicted on the charge, as well as endangering children, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence.
According to prosecutors, Gillum purchased misoprostol from India last September, which induces labor and can cause an abortion. She ingested 12 of the pills, and the next day, gave birth to her son in her apartment — who was apparently alive upon exiting the womb.
“The intention was to induce labor and terminate her pregnancy,” Assistant Licking County Prosecutor Jenny Gonzalez-Wells told reporters. “She was in her third trimester, so she [was] between 28 and 29 weeks pregnant at the time.”
Gonzales-Wells says that Gillum and Mull texted each other throughout the process, and “neither one of them called 911 or sought any emergency medical treatment for the child, and the child did not live.”
The two later went to a local hospital, where those who treated Gillum noted that there was an umbilical cord present, but no baby, and the cord was “too large for it not to have been a full term infant.”
Police arrived at both the hospital and the couple’s apartment, where they found the infant in a shoebox placed inside a garbage bag.
WHDH-TV reports that investigators also found evidence that the two jointly schemed to obtain the pills “and terminate Gillum’s pregnancy because they already had one child and did not want a second.”
A coroner examined the infant, who has now been named Kaden, and found nothing medically wrong with him.
While the incident occurred in September, the indictment was just handed down on Feb. 5 and Gillum and Mull were arrested on Saturday. They are being held on $150,000 bond at the Licking County Justice Center.
The Bible says that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Women throughout history have “lacked natural affection” (2 Timothy 3:3) toward their own sons and daughters and have sought out ways to kill their unborn children.
One woman “described taking ergotrate, then castor oil, then squatting in scalding hot water, then drinking Everclear alcohol. When these methods failed, she hammered at her stomach with a meat pulverizer before going to an illegal abortionist,” writes Leslie Reagan in her book “When Abortion Was a Crime.”
“Women often tried to induce abortion or cause a miscarriage by throwing themselves down stairs or inflicting violence on themselves. They ingested, douched with or inserted into themselves a chilling variety of chemicals and toxins — from bleach to potassium permanganate to turpentine to gunpowder and whiskey,” another report states. “Knitting needles, crochet hooks, scissors and coat hangers were all among the tools used by women who had no choice but to resort to these means.”
Even in 1854, obstetrician Hugh Lennox Hodge stated of the mothers in his day in a lecture on “Criminal Abortion,” “We can bear testimony, that, in some instances, the woman who has been well educated, who occupies high stations in society, whose influence over others is great, and whose character has not been impugned, will deliberately resort to any and every measure which may effectually destroy her unborn offspring.”
“Ashamed or afraid to apply to the charlatan, who sustains his existence by the price of blood, dreading it may be publicity, she recklessly and boldly adopts measures, however severe and dangerous, for the accomplishment of her unnatural, her guilty purpose,” he lamented.
Hodge outlined that mothers would “make extra muscular efforts by long fatiguing walks, by dancing, running, jumping, kept up as long as possible; she will swallow the most nauseous, irritating, and poisonous drugs, and in some instances, will actually arm herself with the surgeon’s instrument, and operate upon her own body, that she may be delivered of an embryo, for which she has no desire, and whose birth and appearance she dreads.”
“So low, gentleman, is the moral sense of community on this subject,” Hodge lamented. “So ignorant are even the greater number of individuals, that even mothers in many instances shrink not at the commission of this crime, but will voluntarily destroy their own progeny, in violation of every natural sentiment, and in opposition to the laws of God and man.”
In Mark 7:20-23 Jesus outlined that murder, like all sin, begins in the heart. It is why He declared that men must be born again (John 3:3) and have their very nature changed, or they cannot see the Kingdom of God.
“That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man,” Jesus said. “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.”
He also taught hope and freedom from abiding sin, explaining in John 8:34-36, “Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
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