But 38 states, including Texas and Tennessee, have “fetal homicide” laws which can send women who self-induce an abortion to jail.
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After seeing a significant amount of blood, she became concerned about her safety and was taken to hospital by her boyfriend, according to The Murfreesboro Post.
“The whole time she was concerned for her health, her safety and never gave any attention to the health and safety to the unborn child”, he said.
According to an incident report by the Murfreesboro Police Department, they were called to Saint Thomas Midtown in Nashville this past September. The use of the hanger damaged his eyes, lungs, and heart, per the Post.
The new mom is now being held on a $200,000 bond at Rutherford County Adult Detention Center. It is not yet clear if she has an attorney. As of 2010, 59 percent of Tennessee women lived in a county without an abortion provider, according to the National Women’s Law Center.
A Tennessee woman is facing an indictment for first-degree attempted murder after she tried to self-abort, offering a stark illustration of how restrictions on reproductive healthcare and criminalization of abortion can impact individuals in the United States.
For more stories and video from Inside Edition check them out online, or on FOX 29, weeknights at 6:30 p.m. Are we going to go back to the days of septic wards and women refusing to tell their doctors what happened?
The police were also quick to paint Yocca as entirely selfishly motivated, sharing no information about any extenuating circumstances that may have led her to this desperate course of action.
It warned: “We suspect that abortion self-induction will increase as clinic-based care becomes more hard to access”. Nothing is telling me whether this woman tried to get an abortion earlier, or what obstacles stood in her way, but I just don’t believe that if she was desperate enough to abort at 24 weeks with a coat hanger she wouldn’t have preferred to have done it much earlier and more safely.
The law exempts only pregnant women who undergo a “lawful medical or surgical procedure” performed by a licensed medical professional – in other words, a legal abortion.
In Tennessee, a woman seeking to end her pregnancy legally must visit a clinic for state-mandated counseling, then wait at least 48 hours before returning to have the actual procedure. Prior to 2012, it was only a crime to cause harm to a fetus after viability. We extend our deepest sympathies to Anna Yocca and her partner for not having the resources they needed and in a timely fashion to access a safe abortion and without having to resort to the unsafe and often deadly alternative of using a coat hanger.
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“After more than four decades of legalized abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy…women still attempt to kill their unborn babies themselves”, Bilger continues.
