Earlier this week, a woman in Indiana was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “feticide” and neglect of a dependent. Purvi Patel went to a hospital emergency room bleeding and in distress; she told physicians that she’d had a miscarriage in a bathroom and tried to resuscitate the fetus. When that proved unsuccessful, Patel, unsure what to do, put the fetus in a plastic bag and left it in a dumpster.
So how could someone who said she miscarried end up being the first woman in the country to be sentenced to feticide? Because, prosecutors contended, Patel tried to induce an abortion through the use of abortion drugs, and that was enough for her to be convicted under a statute which bans “‘knowingly or intentionally terminat[ing] a human pregnancy’ with any intention other than producing a live birth, removing a dead fetus or performing a legal abortion.”
No evidence of abortion drugs were found in either Patel’s body or that of the dead fetus. Yet prosecutors argued that text messages between Patel and a friend about ordering abortion drugs online from Hong Kong were sufficient proof that she tried to abort the fetus, and apparently the jury decided to give more weight to those conversations than actual facts. (The drugs themselves are legal in the U.S. with a prescription, but ordering them online is not.) Of course, these were also the same prosecutors and jury who saw no contradiction in accusing Patel of both attempting to kill an unborn child and simultaneously neglecting a live one.
It’s tempting to say that such lapses in logical thinking are just confined to Indiana. After all, in 2011 the state brought feticide charges against another woman—who, like Patel, is also an Asian-American immigrant. Bei Bei Shuai attempted to kill herself while pregnant; she survived, but her fetus did not. Despite Shuai’s desperation and remorse, and the reasonable assumption that someone who tries to commit suicide would benefit from counseling and compassion, Shuai still spent a year in jail before agreeing to a plea deal that dropped the feticide charges against her.
One woman charged with feticide because she tried to kill herself. Another woman convicted of feticide because she panicked after delivering a stillborn fetus and talked to a friend about abortion drugs. It’s as though the state of Indiana really wants to ignore some sad facts: that miscarriages are common regardless of how healthy a woman is; and some pregnant women become suicidal. Some women aren’t able to tell their families about their pregnancies, and some women panic in a tragic and terrifying situation.
No, Indiana seems to want every pregnancy to play out like a montage from a romantic comedy, free of the difficulty, struggle and reality of actual life. Perhaps that’s why there are only 12 abortion providers in the entire state, 93 percent of Indiana women live in a county that lacks a provider, and the state requires that abortion counseling include language discouraging women from having abortions.
It’s easy to pick on Indiana, but the Hoosier State is far from the only one that restricts abortion access or criminalizes miscarriage—38 states have fetal homicide laws. Although many of these were not drafted to punish women, and many also exempt abortion, both the Patel case and numerous others show how easy it is for prosecutors and judges to put the purported “rights” of a fetus above those of a living woman, and to criminalize pregnant women if they fall down the stairs (Iowa), delay having a C-section (Utah), or miscarry (Tennessee). Louisiana and Florida treat pregnant women with almost unbelievable contempt, and a judge in Washington, D.C. orders a woman to have a C-section—with fatal results.
It’s difficult for me to read about these cases and not think about my own pregnancy, which resulted in a healthy child. I took medications during my pregnancy to control my chronic pain; and even though those medications were taken with the knowledge and approval of several doctors, what if I had been among the 10 to 25 percent of women who miscarry? Would the fact that I had taken medications usually not used during pregnancy have meant that I could have been charged with harming my fetus, or would the specifics not just of my medical circumstances but also my personal ones—white, married and with financial resources—been enough to avoid that?
It’s no secret that some Indiana politicians would like to ban abortion, but don’t want the backlash that would come with being so upfront about it. So they pile on restrictions based on age, finances or geography that disproportionately affect women who are young, poor, or both—women whose real crime is not having political power. The legislators and prosecutors behind these cases care so much about making sure you know where they stand on the theological question of when life begins that they are willing to totally destroy the lives of real, individual women. They know they can’t push around women like me, let alone women like Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, so they throw luckless immigrant women in jail. So, to the Indiana politicians who are still defending this vile feticide law: go pick on someone your own size.
