News

By Gudrun Schultz

PLANTATION, Florida, September 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A young female police officer who shot and killed her boyfriend and then killed herself was distraught over a recent abortion, according to a report by the Miami Herald.

Laura Gunas, 30, an officer with the Plantation police, shot firefighter Robert Peat, 31, in the kitchen of their home on Aug. 4, and then killed herself. Grunas had undergone an abortion a few weeks earlier, according to the police report on the deaths.

Neighbors testified that an hysterical, enraged Grunas attempted to enter their house after Peat apparently locked her out during an intense argument. Peat called a friend, Roth, also a firefighter. When he arrived Grunas told Peat “you need to tell him about you killing my baby.”

When Roth entered the house, Grunas became increasingly upset and said “when [Peat] felt the need to call, did he tell you about killing my baby?” Shortly after she shot her way into the house through a glass door, and then shot Peat and herself.

Roth told police Peat had told him two weeks previously that Grunas was pregnant, and they had decided to abort the baby. Roth said Peat was “enormously upset about it due to religious beliefs, but felt that it was the right thing to do.”

Women who have had an abortion are at significantly higher risk for psychiatric problems and suicide, studies conducted in Europe and North America have shown. A recent study published in the European Journal of Public Health, conducted by Finland’s National Research and Development Center for Welfare and Health (STAKES), found the suicide rate among women who had abortions was six times higher than that of women who had given birth in the previous year, and twice as high as women who had miscarried.

A Canadian study sponsored by the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario in 2001 found that, among 41,000 women who had abortions, hospital admissions rates for psychiatric problems within three months following were five times higher than rates for a similar number of women who had not undergone abortions.

See related LifeSiteNews coverage:

After Abortion the Mental Distress Lasts for Years says New Study
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/dec/05121204.html

After Abortion Women’s Suicide Rates Are Highest Says New Study
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/dec/05120107.html

Abortion’s Lingering Damage Revealed
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/jul/05071204.html