A woman in Indiana faces up to 70 years in jail. Her crime? Having a miscarriage.
Purvi Patel, a 33-year-old Indian-American woman, was found guilty of both feticide and felony neglect of a child last week. When combined, these charges add up to a life sentence for Patel.
RH Reality Check has been following the case since Patel was first arrested last July, detailing the court proceedings and the evidence presented.
As with any criminal case, there are two sides to the story — the defense from Patel, and the prosecution by the state.
Patel states she reported to an emergency room last year after experiencing extremely heavy vaginal bleeding. At first, she maintained she had not been pregnant and miscarried, though that was the hospital staff’s original diagnosis.
However, after being pushed by staff, she admitted to being pregnant and told them that she had given birth to a stillborn child, which she placed in a dumpster.
Police believe something much more sinister occurred.
According to evidence gathered by the prosecution, Patel obtained black-market abortion pills from Hong Kong in an attempt to terminate her pregnancy. Then, after taking the pills, gave birth to a live child, which she allowed to die.
Patel tested negative for the abortifacient police claimed she used. The only evidence they have that supposedly proves Patel attempted to find abortive pills are text messages found on her phone.
Those text messages have not been released, but police claim that in them, Patel admits to seeking out said pills. Otherwise, there is no evidence of her ever ordering, receiving or
taking these pills.
There is also a discrepancy in how long Patel believes she was pregnant and the gestational period put forward by the prosecution.
A friend of Patel’s states she could not have been more than one or two months along. Police believe the baby was delivered 22 weeks after conception. Police also believe that Patel gave birth to a live baby, even though she maintains it was stillborn.
The test used by the prosecution to prove that the fetus was alive is a highly controversial, widely discounted procedure known as the “float test.”
This entails opening the chest cavity of the child, removing the lungs and placing them in water to see if they float. If the lungs remain on the surface, it is taken as proof that the fetus took at least one breath before perishing, thus giving the lungs the air needed to keep them buoyant.
The forensic pathologist who performed the test in Patel’s trial presented evidence of the fetus’ lungs floating. Forensic pathology as a whole, however, does not believe that the “float test” has any validity.
Leon Neyfakh at Slate.com notes the most recent edition of “Knight’s Forensic Pathology” states the float test is too unreliable to be used in testimony during a criminal trial.
“There are too many recorded instances when control tests have shown that stillborn lungs may float and the lungs from undoubtedly live-born infants have sunk,” the textbook said.
The Indiana criminal justice system, however, allowed the test to stand as valid evidence that a live birth occurred.
This is how Patel ended up facing two seemingly oxymoronic charges. How is it possible to kill a fetus while simultaneously neglecting said fetus? The two charges conflict with one another on a fundamental level — yet Patel was charged with both.
This is because in Indiana, a person does not actually have to kill a fetus to be charged with feticide. The law is written so that attempted termination of a pregnancy qualifies someone to be legally guilty of feticide, even if the fetus survives.
Thirty-eight states — Louisiana included—have similar feticide laws to the ones that have put Patel in jail.
This law, originally written to discourage illegal abortion procedures and protect pregnant women from abuse, has been perverted into a means to punish women for miscarriages and stillbirths.
Despite the fact almost all of the evidence presented by the police was unsubstantiated, the jury only debated for five hours before reaching their decision. They found Patel guilty of both charges.
This case is scary. It sets a precedent that endangers all women by robbing them of the reproductive justice
they deserve.
The criminalization of pregnant women is not new — Alabama has a history of prosecuting pregnant women who abuse illegal drugs.
But something different is happening with Patel.
She was not found to have drugs in her system. There is no evidence she endangered a fetus. Yet she still may spend the rest of her life in prison.
There is also a history of “fetal homicide” laws being used to target women of color.
Statistically, women of color have less access to reproductive services — meaning that their pregnancies are at a high risk of complication.
In prosecuting Patel, Indiana has sent the message that the lives of fetuses are more important than the lives of women, and people can be punished for the functions of their reproductive system.
Patel’s case tells women that taking care of their fetuses is more important than taking care of themselves, and that, even if they do everything “right” during their pregnancy, if a fetus dies, the mother of that fetus deserves to pay with her own life.
Nobody deserves to be treated like a criminal for
miscarrying a child.
Indiana is challenging the very basis of reproductive justice, and robbing a woman of her life based on shoddy, unproven evidence.
Now that this legal precedent is set, it’s only a matter of time until women here in Louisiana face the same type of cases.
And with this state’s consistently horrible record on dealing with reproductive rights, that prospect is nothing short of
horrifying.
Logan Anderson is a 21-year-old mass communication senior from Houston, Texas. Follow her on Twitter @LoganD_Anderson.