Today, the Court of Appeals of IN vacated the felony conviction of 35-year-old Purvi Patel, who was charged with feticide after a self-induced abortion IN 2014. Patel was arrested while seeking treatment at a local hospital for profuse bleeding after the delivery and sentenced to feticide and neglect of a dependent in 2015, becoming the first woman in the state of in to be convicted of feticide for a self-induced abortion. The fact remains that both women who have been charged with feticide in IN have been Asian.
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In a 42-page ruling, by Judge Terry A Crone, the court reduced the child neglect charge by an order of magnitude.
Attorneys for IN argued that Patel was at least 25 weeks into her pregnancy. IN passed the measure in 2009 after a pregnant woman was shot and lost the twins she was carrying. State of IN, 71A04-1504-CR-166, the appellate court unanimously vacated both of Patel’s convictions.
Patel’s conviction, in 2015, made her a national symbol in the debate swirling around abortion. Trump has said women who have illegal abortions ought to face “some form of punishment”. The court also ruled that Patel’s class A felony charge should be bumped down to a class D felony.
According to court records, Patel had taken an abortion medication, which is not illegal in IN, that she purchased online. “That is not what these laws were put in place to do”.
Do you believe that Purvi Patel was rightly charged with feticide?
But the court did overturn the feticide conviction, ruling that the statute wasn’t meant to be applied to pregnant women themselves.
Patel endangered the child by not seeking medical care, but prosecutors failed to prove that her failure to do so resulted in the boy’s death, the court said. Patel’s attorneys, who disputed the infant’s gestational age, argued the infant was stillborn, and not developed enough to survive outside the womb no matter what Patel did. The prosecution painted Patel as hard-hearted and calculating.
Patel was nevertheless convicted on both counts.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2015, two years after her self-induced abortion at her family’s home. Neither conviction carried a mandatory prison term.
But, Patel’s upheld conviction for neglect of a dependent presents the issue of fetal personhood.
The ruling comes as a growing number of women in the USA face prosecution for their behavior or actions during pregnancy.
A few women, like Patel, have been prosecuted under such laws for trying to induce their own abortion – even in cases where it would be legal for them to receive an abortion in a clinic.
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In 2013, prosecutors say Patel, 35, took abortion-inducing drugs because she was afraid her family would find out that a married man had gotten her pregnant. Patel claims that she had a miscarriage and that she was bleeding so profusely that she was in shock for 10-15 minutes. She declined to tell her conservative, religious family, and instead, tried to get an abortion. According to sources, a doctor who belonged to an anti-abortion group called the police. She was arrested in late July 2013.
