Pregnant Refugee Pleads For Abortion: "Please Help Me"

    The Australian government is adamant that Abyan changed her mind.

    A short letter, scrawled on a torn-out diary page, appears to show Somali refugee Abyan insisting she still needs an abortion, despite Australia's claim that she changed her mind.

    The 23-year-old, who was allegedly raped on Nauru two months ago, was flown out to Sydney for the procedure last week, but snatched from her room on Friday and sent back to the island without the procedure.

    Australia's immigration officials insist she changed her mind, but her lawyer says she was just asking for counselling before going ahead with treatment.

    Abyan has penned a letter claiming there was no counselling, no interpreter, and that she could not talk to her lawyer before receiving the medical treatment.

    "I have never said I do not want a termination," reads the letter, obtained by BuzzFeed News.

    "I never saw a doctor. I saw a nurse at a clinic but there was no counselling. I saw a nurse at Villawood but there was no interpreter. I asked but was not allowed to talk to my lawyer.

    "Please help me."

    Immigration minister Peter Dutton, angry at advocates and media reports, has spent the last few days trying to alter the record of events that led to Abyan being returned to Nauru.

    On Monday morning on ABC radio he hit back at advocates for "pushing their own barrel", calling some of the statements from advocates "patently fabricated".

    He claims he still has a desire to help Abyan.

    BuzzFeed News spoke to Abyan's lawyer, George Newhouse, who said the case was now in the hands of prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. When pushed about whether he'd seek help from other countries, New Zealand came up as an option.

    "We had not considered that option but I would not rule it out," Newhouse told BuzzFeed News.

    "It might be a viable alternative but, once again, that is a matter for our leaders."

    Turnbull has just returned from New Zealand and his first foreign trip as Aussie PM.

    He was pushed by counterpart John Key to show more mercy around immigration issues, especially towards Kiwis locked up in Australian onshore detention centres.

    Tens of thousands of people have signed petitions calling for Abyan to be brought back to Australia to receive the abortion, with many angry at the lack of transparency of the whole situation.

    Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said it was the "lowest thing" she'd experienced in politics.

    Exploiting a woman's anguish about having an abortion or not after she's been raped would have to be the lowest thing I've seen in politics