SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
In Egregious "Feticide" Case, Woman Fights Back Against Reproductive Injustice
Purvi Patel is first woman in U.S. history to be sentenced to prison for losing her own pregnancy
May 23, 2016
An Indiana woman sentenced to 20 years in prison for losing her own pregnancy will appeal her conviction on Monday in the latest development of the controversial "feticide" case.
Purvi Patel, who was convicted of feticide and neglect of a dependent in April 2015, will argue that the law used to convict her was "passed to protect pregnant women from violence," not to outlaw abortion. She will file the claim with the Indiana Court of Appeals, the state's second-highest court.
Patel was arrested in 2013 after she sought treatment for blood loss at an emergency room in South Bend, where she told doctors she'd had a miscarriage and stillbirth. But prosecutors successfully argued that she had taken drugs to induce an abortion and had delivered her fetus alive before abandoning it in a dumpster behind her family's restaurant.
In an appellate brief filed last fall, Patel's attorneys argued that there were "multiple errors" in how the state interpreted the feticide law and that it in fact has "no role in criminalizing unlawful abortions, which are dealt with through a separate statute."
The prosecution also failed to show that there was "anything Patel could have done--or known to do--to save the baby within the less than a minute it could have lived," the brief stated.
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women published a blog post on Monday slamming the state's misuse of the law to convict Patel, writing:
Although Indiana has no law permitting punishment of pregnant people who have or attempt to have abortions, prosecutors misused the state's feticide law -- passed to protect pregnant women from violence -- [to] instead, re-criminalize abortion and send Ms. Patel to prison. And, because the prosecution did not have any actual evidence that Ms. Patel had a live birth and neglected a newborn, the prosecution focused on her actions and omissions during pregnancy, including her abortion to win a conviction on the neglect of a dependent charge. Ms. Patel has already served more than a year behind bars.
Numerous women's advocacy groups, along with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, have also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Patel.
Jill E. Abrams, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice, told the Associated Press this week that the case marked the first time that the Indiana feticide law was used to prosecute a woman for an "allegedly self-induced abortion."
"Prosecutors have been very creative and very egregious, stretching far beyond the letter of the law and even the legislative intent behind the law," she said.
The case is set to be heard at 2:00pm EST.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Nadia Prupis
Nadia Prupis is a former Common Dreams staff writer. She wrote on media policy for Truthout.org and has been published in New America Media and AlterNet. She graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a BA in English in 2008.
An Indiana woman sentenced to 20 years in prison for losing her own pregnancy will appeal her conviction on Monday in the latest development of the controversial "feticide" case.
Purvi Patel, who was convicted of feticide and neglect of a dependent in April 2015, will argue that the law used to convict her was "passed to protect pregnant women from violence," not to outlaw abortion. She will file the claim with the Indiana Court of Appeals, the state's second-highest court.
Patel was arrested in 2013 after she sought treatment for blood loss at an emergency room in South Bend, where she told doctors she'd had a miscarriage and stillbirth. But prosecutors successfully argued that she had taken drugs to induce an abortion and had delivered her fetus alive before abandoning it in a dumpster behind her family's restaurant.
In an appellate brief filed last fall, Patel's attorneys argued that there were "multiple errors" in how the state interpreted the feticide law and that it in fact has "no role in criminalizing unlawful abortions, which are dealt with through a separate statute."
The prosecution also failed to show that there was "anything Patel could have done--or known to do--to save the baby within the less than a minute it could have lived," the brief stated.
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women published a blog post on Monday slamming the state's misuse of the law to convict Patel, writing:
Although Indiana has no law permitting punishment of pregnant people who have or attempt to have abortions, prosecutors misused the state's feticide law -- passed to protect pregnant women from violence -- [to] instead, re-criminalize abortion and send Ms. Patel to prison. And, because the prosecution did not have any actual evidence that Ms. Patel had a live birth and neglected a newborn, the prosecution focused on her actions and omissions during pregnancy, including her abortion to win a conviction on the neglect of a dependent charge. Ms. Patel has already served more than a year behind bars.
Numerous women's advocacy groups, along with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, have also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Patel.
Jill E. Abrams, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice, told the Associated Press this week that the case marked the first time that the Indiana feticide law was used to prosecute a woman for an "allegedly self-induced abortion."
"Prosecutors have been very creative and very egregious, stretching far beyond the letter of the law and even the legislative intent behind the law," she said.
The case is set to be heard at 2:00pm EST.
Nadia Prupis
Nadia Prupis is a former Common Dreams staff writer. She wrote on media policy for Truthout.org and has been published in New America Media and AlterNet. She graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a BA in English in 2008.
An Indiana woman sentenced to 20 years in prison for losing her own pregnancy will appeal her conviction on Monday in the latest development of the controversial "feticide" case.
Purvi Patel, who was convicted of feticide and neglect of a dependent in April 2015, will argue that the law used to convict her was "passed to protect pregnant women from violence," not to outlaw abortion. She will file the claim with the Indiana Court of Appeals, the state's second-highest court.
Patel was arrested in 2013 after she sought treatment for blood loss at an emergency room in South Bend, where she told doctors she'd had a miscarriage and stillbirth. But prosecutors successfully argued that she had taken drugs to induce an abortion and had delivered her fetus alive before abandoning it in a dumpster behind her family's restaurant.
In an appellate brief filed last fall, Patel's attorneys argued that there were "multiple errors" in how the state interpreted the feticide law and that it in fact has "no role in criminalizing unlawful abortions, which are dealt with through a separate statute."
The prosecution also failed to show that there was "anything Patel could have done--or known to do--to save the baby within the less than a minute it could have lived," the brief stated.
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women published a blog post on Monday slamming the state's misuse of the law to convict Patel, writing:
Although Indiana has no law permitting punishment of pregnant people who have or attempt to have abortions, prosecutors misused the state's feticide law -- passed to protect pregnant women from violence -- [to] instead, re-criminalize abortion and send Ms. Patel to prison. And, because the prosecution did not have any actual evidence that Ms. Patel had a live birth and neglected a newborn, the prosecution focused on her actions and omissions during pregnancy, including her abortion to win a conviction on the neglect of a dependent charge. Ms. Patel has already served more than a year behind bars.
Numerous women's advocacy groups, along with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, have also filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Patel.
Jill E. Abrams, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice, told the Associated Press this week that the case marked the first time that the Indiana feticide law was used to prosecute a woman for an "allegedly self-induced abortion."
"Prosecutors have been very creative and very egregious, stretching far beyond the letter of the law and even the legislative intent behind the law," she said.
The case is set to be heard at 2:00pm EST.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.