by Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press
Jona Affholder was around eight weeks’ pregnant, and it was a little after 4 a.m., when she said she woke up to find her boyfriend on top of her. For a split second, she thought he was hugging her. Then, she told me, she realized he was pinning her down, forcing his fingers into her mouth: “I truly thought he was going to kill me.”
After a two-minute struggle, Affholder had a thought: If her boyfriend wanted to kill her, she’d already be unconscious. She remembers realizing that he was smashing a crushed powder inside her bottom lip and onto her gums. “I knew, after that point, that it was an abortion medication,” she said.
It was December 18, 2024, and the then–27-year-old Affholder, from Toledo, Ohio, had been dating 32-year-old Dr. Hassan-James Abbas—a local surgeon—for around three months. In the beginning, she had been excited about the relationship, and hoped it might turn serious. “All I’d ever seen from him was just like a completely normal person who led with kindness,” Affholder said. “He seemed very genuine.”
But when, a week before the alleged assault, she told Abbas she was pregnant—and that she wanted to keep the baby—she saw another side of him. She said he became “aggressive,” “angry,” and “nasty,” insisting that the pregnancy would bring shame on his family, and demanding she have an abortion. He also admitted that he had an estranged wife, to whom he was still legally married.