http://www.vox.com/2015/4/3/8336863/...n-for-feticide
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yet the woman in Colorado who CUT a fetus out of a pregnant woman doesn't get murder charges..
This is afghanistan level shit, how are we letting it happen in our own country?
I don't get it. The only thing wrong she did was putting it in a dumpster. That was fucked up. But I understand she was probably freaking the fuck out and not thinking clearly. But she didn't seem to cause the death of the fetus, from what I can gather from the article. So, I don't get the murder charge.
Does this mean that every woman who has had a miscarriage or abortion considered a murderer? Fucking ridiculous. I guess I'm a murderer then, by those standards.
This is insane. Why don't we educate women about what to do when a stillborn fetus is coming out so that they quit doing stupid sh*t like doing dumpster drop offs. I bet she wouldn't be facing any jail time had she went straight to the hospital. Thats what makes her look suspicious and guilty like she did this intentionally thinking no one would find out. But she probably was in extreme pain (or didn't know how to complete a labor herself) forcing her to get medical aid.
It is kinda f*cked up she took herself to a hospital for care but dumped the fetus in the trash. So yeah she should be punished but 20+ years seems overboard.
Its sad people are so afraid of what their parents think they go to great lengths to eliminate a pregnancy.
The article doesn't really make anything very clear. I get she was worried about her parents, due to cultural taboos. Was the fetus far enough along so that it was viable? Was it a miscarriage or a birth followed by neglect? What did the ME say? The article is missing some important facts before any conclusions can be reached. Seems more like a piece of sensationalistic journalism. From the article I can't say if the prosecutor was over zealous or not. However, the jurors didn't seem to think so. What they heard would be interesting.
There was a little more to this story. In particular, there was a lot of evidence to suggest that the fetus took a breath outside of the womb before it died. Her pregnancy was far enough along that viability was possible. She also indicated that she bought black market abortion drugs. So if you piece it all together, the picture painted is a woman who took something to induce the miscarriage and then, when the baby came out breathing anyway, dumped it.
I am not saying that any of this was the case, but just pointing out that, in the view of prosecutors and apparently the jury, the fact pattern looked pretty awful.
According to the article, the woman texted a friend about buying abortion drugs online but the toxicologist didn’t find any trace of those drugs in her body or in the fetus’ body. And police found no evidence that she actually purchased the drugs.
That article is very incomplete, but I haven't seen much else on that aspect. The bulk of her actual sentence stemmed from the neglect charge anyway. The medical examiner was convinced that she had a live birth and let the baby die. Her plans to obtain black market abortion drugs, dumping the baby in a dumpster and lying to doctors after-the-fact about being pregnant, just further killed her credibility.
I looked at some more articles on the case. This one says the prosecution used a discredited method for determining whether or not the fetus was alive after it left the womb.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/ma...ning.html?_r=0
But the pathologist for the prosecution, Joseph Prahlow, testified that the fetus was further along than that — at 25 to 30 weeks gestation, which is past the point of viability — and was born alive. News reports from the trial emphasized Prahlow’s use of a “lung float test” in making his determination. The idea behind the test — which dates from the 17th century — is that if the lungs float in water, the baby took at least one breath. If they sink, then the fetus died before leaving the womb.
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If that sounds like the old test for witchcraft — if an accused witch floated, she was judged guilty; if she sank, she was innocent — it’s also about as old and nearly as discredited. “The lung float test was disproven over 100 years ago as an indicator for live birth,” Gregory J. Davis, assistant state medical examiner for Kentucky and a professor of pathology and lab medicine at the University of Kentucky, told me. “It’s just not valid.”
Also, the doctor who started the investigation sounds like an anti-abortion extremist.
http://www.pri.org/stories/2015-04-0...ciation-member
The person who set the legal process in motion was Dr. Kelly McGuire, who was on call the night in 2013 when Purvi Patel showed up in the emergency room of St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center near South Bend, Indiana. McGuire is listed as a pro-life physician for the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
According to its mission statement, the group’s members affirm five principles, one of which is “[t]hat elective disruption/abortion of human life at any time from fertilization onward constitutes the willful destruction of an innocent human being, and that this procedure will have no place in our practice of the healing arts.”
Eagle, the float test was presented in conjunction with a number of other medical indicators of post birth life. Her attorney not only challenged the medical evidence both during testimony and in a pre-trial motion to exclude the testimony, including the float test, but had the option of calling in his own medical expert to refute the pathologist's findings. The prosecutor, the jury and the judge all heard the full scope of testimony from both sides and they all found the prosecutor's pathologist to be credible.
These sensationalist articles are rather confusing to me, truth be told. She was not sentenced to 20+ years for miscarrying or even for trying to self-administer an abortion. She is going to prison because the medical experts involved, the prosecutor, a jury of her peers and the judge all believe, after hearing all arguments from both sides, that she discarded a baby who was alive outside the womb.
Again, I have no horse in this race, but I doubt that I'd be in favor of making any changes to the laws that would allow someone to discard or kill a living baby, even if the baby was not wanted and its birth premature.
I agree...If she did not want the baby she could have either a) travelled somewhere to get a legal abortion or b) carried the baby full term and dropped it off at the hospital or safe haven places.
But she was so scared of her parents and what people think of her....well I wonder what they think of her now?!?
Dumba$$ broad