Can we justify punishing a pregnant woman for fetal death, etc.?

[KingOrfeo]

In Indiana, Purvi Patel, who says she miscarried, has just been sentenced to 20 years under a feticide statute.

Last July, Patel went to an emergency room in South Bend, Ind., where she told the doctors she had a miscarriage. Asked what she had done with the fetal remains, she said the baby was stillborn and, not knowing what else to do, she put the body in a bag and left it in a Dumpster. The police were able to recover the body. Later, they also found text messages in which Patel told a friend about ordering pills to induce an abortion from a pharmacy in Hong Kong and about taking the medication. Three days later, she texted the same friend, “Just lost the baby.”

Patel was charged with felony child neglect and feticide, based on the supposed self-abortion. Asked by Slate’s Leon Neyfakh about the apparent contradiction between the charges, the St. Joseph County prosecutor, Ken Cotter, said that a person can be guilty of feticide under Indiana law for deliberately trying to end a pregnancy, even if the fetus survives. As Neyfakh points out, the Indiana feticide statute exempts legal abortions — but while the pills Patel took are available in the United States with a prescription, it’s against the law to order them online, as she apparently did. And so she was prosecuted for taking the medication as well as for letting her baby die after the self-abortion failed.

First such conviction ever in the U.S.; might not be the last. Heather Digby Parton writes:

Indiana is obviously a very conservative state and it would be easy to chalk these laws up to its particular tendency to use the state to advance a social conservative agenda in the name of “life” and “religious liberty.” Sadly, Indiana is not the only state criminalizing pregnancy. Prosecuting pregnant women for the death of their fetus has become distressingly common throughout America. The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law published a study called “Arrests of and Forced Interventions on Pregnant Women in the United States“. They found hundreds of cases of women being held criminally liable for the deaths or alleged endangerment of their fetuses along with forced medical interventions and incarceration of women for the alleged protection of the fetus. The authors of the study, Lynn Paltrow of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Jeanne Flavin, Professor of Sociology, Fordham University pointed out the strange legal terrain on which this is all taking place:

In almost all of the cases we identified, the arrests and other actions would not have happened but for the fact that the woman was pregnant at the time of the alleged violation of law. And, in almost every case we identified, the person who initiated the action had no direct legal authority for doing so. No state legislature has passed a law that holds women legally liable for the outcome of their pregnancies. No state legislature has passed a law making it a crime for a pregnant woman to continue her pregnancy to term in spite of a drug or alcohol problem. No state has passed a law exempting pregnant women from the protections of the state and federal constitution. And, under Roe v. Wade, abortion remains legal.

Yet, since 1973, many states have passed feticide measures and laws restricting access to safe abortion care that, like so-called “personhood” measures, encourage state actors to treat eggs, embryos, and fetuses as if they are legally separate from the pregnant woman. We found that these laws have been used as the basis for a disturbing range of punitive state actions in every region of the country and against women of every race, though disproportionately against women in the South, low-income women and African-American women.

Many examples they give are astonishing. E.g., a woman who gave birth to twins, one stillborn, was charged with criminal homicide because of her decision to delay cesarean surgery. A woman who smoked marijuana while pregnant, and bore healthy twins, was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.

I can only see all this from a man's perspective, but ISTM that it's hard enough to be a woman, and at risk of pregnancy, without also being at risk for what the law might do to you if you don't handle your pregnancy just right. I suppose I could entertain an argument for locking up a pregnant alcoholic to save the baby from fetal alcohol syndrome, which is an actual thing; but even that's a stretch (and since that would give the woman an incentive to abort, it's probably not going anywhere politically).

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

In Indiana, Purvi Patel, who says she miscarried, has just been sentenced to 20 years under a feticide statute.



First such conviction ever in the U.S.; might not be the last. Heather Digby Parton writes:



Many examples they give are astonishing. E.g., a woman who gave birth to twins, one stillborn, was charged with criminal homicide because of her decision to delay cesarean surgery. A woman who smoked marijuana while pregnant, and bore healthy twins, was arrested for delivery of a controlled substance to a minor.

I can only see all this from a man's perspective, but ISTM that it's hard enough to be a woman, and at risk of pregnancy, without also being at risk for what the law might do to you if you don't handle your pregnancy just right. I suppose I could entertain an argument for locking up a pregnant alcoholic to save the baby from fetal alcohol syndrome, which is an actual thing; but even that's a stretch (and since that would give the woman an incentive to abort, it's probably not going anywhere politically).

Youre okay with a nutcase killing a baby with a knife?

 

[phrodeau]

Youre okay with a nutcase killing a baby with a knife?

If it's your mama.

 

[KingOrfeo]

We learned about "feticide" as a defined crime in law school, but the scenarios we studied involved, say, a man beating a pregnant woman and causing a miscarriage.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

It happened in Indiana.
I hope to fuck that they do not get away
with what they have done to the law, and
to this woman.

Ugly, in the courts of law, happens everyday.
But, this is a particular brand of ugly.

Margaret Atwood's Handmaid's Tale, creeps closer to real flesh life.

 

[badbabysitter]

Youre okay with a nutcase killing a baby with a knife?

If that's what happened, I would be

but it didnt...so you're just batshit crazy

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

If that's what happened, I would be

but it didnt...so you're just batshit crazy

You need to read the news occasionally.

 

[badbabysitter]

You need to read the news occasionally.

show me where Purvi Patel took a knife to a baby

quick answer... she didnt

so... you're batshit crazy

 

[Boxlicker101]

Youre okay with a nutcase killing a baby with a knife?

If you are referring to an instance where a person - usually another woman - attacks a pregnant woman and uses a knife to remove the fetus, usually killing the expectant mother and the fetus, I am 100% not okay with that. That killer should be locked up until she is dead and stinking.

If you are referring to an incident where a pregnant agonizes over her choices and finally decides to get an abortion, I am 100% in favor of her doctor performing the operation, whether a knife or scalpel is used or not.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

If you are referring to an instance where a person - usually another woman - attacks a pregnant woman and uses a knife to remove the fetus, usually killing the expectant mother and the fetus, I am 100% not okay with that. That killer should be locked up until she is dead and stinking.

If you are referring to an incident where a pregnant agonizes over her choices and finally decides to get an abortion, I am 100% in favor of her doctor performing the operation, whether a knife or scalpel is used or not.

I pray every day that more Democrats will abort, my problem is with the business of taking the life of an innocent human. People like you can call them what you want but they are human.

 

[badbabysitter]

I pray every day that more Democrats will abort, my problem is with the business of taking the life of an innocent human. People like you can call them what you want but they are human.

So you're a doctor now too?