Purvi Patel found guilty of feticide and child neglect over unborn baby's death

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/04/purvi-patel-found-guilty-feticide-unborn-childs-death

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Purvi Patel, the 33-year-old woman charged with feticide and child neglect over the death of her unborn child, has been found guilty of all counts by a jury in Indiana.

She was convicted of using abortion drugs that she bought online to terminate her pregnancy, and then also of child neglect once the child was born.

The court heard how Patel kept her pregnancy secret from her parents, who are strict Hindus. Her father testified that he taught the principle of no sex before marriage.

According to local CBS affiliate WSBT, Patel has said that the baby was already dead when it was born, that she tried to revive it, and that she didn’t call 911 because she was in shock.

Court documents show that Patel then went to the St Joseph hospital in Mishawaka, Indiana, bleeding from her vagina. She at first denied having given birth, but told medical staff later that she had delivered a still-born child at home, and had placed the body in a dumpster.

Kathrine Jack, an attorney who has followed the case closely, said that the verdict “sends a message to pregnant women in Indiana that if they have still-birth, or miscarriage, or in some cases seek an abortion they could be criminally investigating and charged for fetucide.”

“I’m afraid pregnant women in Indiana are going to fear going to the doctor”, she added.

The crux of the case lay in whether Patel’s baby was breathing or still-born at the moment of birth. A medical witness for the defence reportedly testified that, at an estimated 24 weeks, the fetus was not viable, and could not have survived outside the womb. A forensic pathologist ruled that the infant was alive at birth.

The verdict is mutually contradictory. Child neglect would require the baby to have been alive and viable, while the feticide charge would require the fetus to have died in utero. Despite this, Patel was convicted on both charges.

Neither charge carries mandatory prison time, but the maximum sentence for child neglect is 50 years – with an additional maximum of 20 years for feticide. Sentencing is set for 6 March.

The case is seen by women’s rights activists as part of a creeping criminalisation of pregnant women. In 2011, also in Indiana, Bei Bei Shuai was prosecuted under the same feticide laws after a suicide attempt ended in the death of her unborn child.

When it was first enacted, critics claim, the law was designed to prosecute acts by violent third parties such as abusive boyfriends. It was never intended to criminalise and stigmatise abortion or pregnancy.

Other similarly intentioned laws across the US have been used to prosecute women for actions they take while pregnant. In 2011 in Mississippi, Rennie Gibbs, who was 15 at the time, lost her baby 36 weeks into her pregnancy.

Prosecutors charged her with “depraved-heart murder” over the baby’s death because she had a cocaine habit despite there being no evidence that it was the direct cause of the stillbirth.