Earlier today, Purvi Patel, a 35-year-old IN woman previously convicted of feticide, was released from prison.
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Women’s advocacy groups argued that Patel’s arrest marked the first time in IN that the state’s feticide law was used against a woman because of an alleged self-induced abortion, and Patel’s attorneys argued that the evidence prosecutors used didn’t apply to her alleged actions in a premature delivery.
On Wednesday, reported the Indianapolis Star, a county judge at Patel’s resentencing hearing declined to reinstate the feticide charge, and reduced her child neglect charge to time served.
In Patel’s appeal back in May, her lawyers, Stanford Law professor Lawrence Marshall and Indiana University law professor Joel Schumm, argued Patel’s complex case by highlighting the numerous contradictions made by the prosecution.
According to court records, Patel bought the abortion-inducing drugs online, took the drugs and then delivered the premature baby that died in the home she shared with her parents and grandparents in the community of Granger, northeast of South Bend. The court also bumped the neglect charge from a class A felony to a class D and asked a lower court to resentence Patel. Because she’s already served about double that amount, her immediate release was ordered. “She has to take her life and try to make something meaningful out of all the wreckage that got her here”. She put the child’s body in a trash bin behind her family’s restaurant. The baby was estimated to be between 25-30 weeks at birth. In both cases, including Patel’s, the state argued that a pregnant woman could be charged for killing her own fetus.
But in July, an appeals court decided only third parties who end a pregnancy can be convicted of feticide.
In 2013, Patel went to the hospital, quickly losing a high volume of blood after performing the abortion, and the fact that a doctor attending to her was of staunchly anti-choice ideology and bias played a significant role in getting police involved.
The court said Patel endangered the child by not seeking medical care, but that prosecutors failed to prove this action resulted in the boy’s death. The appeals court ruled that Indiana’s prosecution of Patel under the feticide law was an “abrupt departure” from the law’s intention.
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