Purvi Patel, 35, an Indian American woman from Granger, Indiana, became a suspect when her unborn baby was found in a Mishawaka, Indiana dumpster in July 2013. On Monday, March 31, 2015, she was convicted to 20 years in prison for feticide, specifically illegally inducing her own abortion — and accused of having a baby whom she allowed to die, equivalent to felony child neglect.
Patel told doctors when she visited an emergency room in South Bend, Indiana for profuse bleeding and that she miscarried. She alerted them she didn’t know what to do with the fetus, a half-pound infant boy, so she discarded the remains in a dumpster behind her family’s restaurant. Police recovered the remains of the stillborn. During their investigation they found Patel’s text message communication between she and a friend that she’d ordered abortion-inducing pills from a pharmacy in Hong Kong. She told the friend in a text three days later that she “Just lost the baby.”
Patel’s actions were out of fear. She allegedly was afraid for her parents and grandparents to know she was involved with a married man who impregnated her.
Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union and other women’s advocacy groups have all filed friend-of-the-court briefs siding with Patel.
Jill E Adams, executive director of the abortion rights advocacy group Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice says the use of the fetal homicide law for an alleged self-induced abortion is stretching the law.
“Prosecutors have been very creative and very egregious, stretching far beyond the letter of the law and even the legislative intent behind the law,” she said of efforts by prosecutors in some states to use a variety of laws to criminalize self-induced abortions.
Prosecutors argue the baby took at least one breath before dying and the “defendant placed her baby in appreciable danger by not obtaining medical care for him”.
In her appeal, Patel’s attorneys argue she should not have been convicted of neglect, arguing prosecutors failed to prove she knew she had delivered a live baby or that she could have done anything to save its life.
Patel’s appeal will be heard in court this week.
