As Indian-American Purvi Patel became the first US woman to be convicted and sentenced this week to as many as 20 years on charges of foeticide and neglect, shocked advocacy groups believe the Indiana court ruling could set off an adverse trend of targeting pregnant women opting for abortion.
Decrying the “extreme sentence” handed to the 33-year-old Patel who maintained all along that it was a case of miscarriage and still-born fetus, the National Advocates for Pregnant
Women (NAPW) voiced apprehension that despite claims to the contrary, feticide laws could indeed come to be used to criminalise abortions.
“While no woman should face criminal charges for having an abortion or experiencing a pregnancy loss, the cruel length of this sentence confirms that feticide and other measures promoted by anti-abortion organisations are intended to punish not protect women,” said NAPW Executive Director lynn Paltrow.
Besides criticising the Indiana court for allowing the State’s feticide law to be used as a mechanism for prosecuting women who attempt to terminate a pregnancy, the NAPW sharply attacked the prosecution for using “discredited and invalid scientific testimony to persuade the jury that the baby had been born alive”.
The fear that other States could emulate Indiana is real, women’s rights activists say, pointing out that fetal homicide laws are in place in 38 of the 50 US States. And, in at least 23 of these States, the laws extend to all stages of pregnancy – even before a woman might come to know she is pregnant. “This is quite traumatic and frightening,” Paltrow commented.
last December, the NAPW along with several maternal health and bioethics experts and reproductive justice organisations, filed an amicus curiae brief urging the Indiana court to dismiss the feticide charge against Patel.