A Florida man has been arrested and charged with murder after police say he shot his pregnant 18-year-old girlfriend to death for refusing to get an abortion.
Donovan Faison, 21, was arrested Tuesday and slapped with two counts of felony homicide in the deaths of Kaylin Fiengo and her unborn baby. Fiengo was found dead in the driver’s seat of her car in a Sanford park 10 months ago, the same night she’d driven there to meet up with her boyfriend. Investigators said they learned that shortly before Fiengo's death, she and Faison had been arguing over whether to end her pregnancy, with Faison insisting she do so and Fiengo refusing.
Fiengo was around 12 weeks pregnant at the time of her death, and also left behind a one-year-old son.
“Today’s events come after a long, almost ten months, of an exhaustive investigation,” Sanford Police Chief Cecil Smith said in a statement. “Our investigators have made sure every possible shred of evidence was processed and analyzed in order to bring Kaylin’s killer to justice.”
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While it’s understandably hard to get a bead on exactly how many women are pressured and threatened by their partners into terminating their pregnancies, the link between domestic violence and abortion is well-established. Data shows that anywhere between 6% and 22% of women who seek abortions report having experienced recent violence from a sexual partner. A national study on forced abortion in America found that 64% of women who obtained abortions were pressured to do so, with 65% of those displaying physical signs of trauma. Another article published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons stated that about 74% of women have experienced “at least subtle forms of pressure” to abort.