In a sane world the conviction and sentencing of Purvi Patel for inducing an abortion and then tossing the baby in a dumpster to die would be unremarkable. What she did, regardless of motivation, was horrendous and the only questionable thing involved was that she was convicted of feticide rather than the blatantly obvious murder she carried out.
Patel was found guilty in February of neglect of a baby whose body was found on July 14, 2013, in a trash bin behind her family’s restaurant in Mishawaka and of feticide, which in Indiana is defined as a person who knowingly or intentionally terminates a pregnancy with an intention other than to produce a live birth.
Chief Deputy Prosecutor Mark Roule asked Hurley to sentence Patel to 30 years on the neglect charge and 10 years on the feticide, saying she failed to seek medical help when the baby was born alive.
“The mother did nothing but leave him on the floor to die and threw him in the trash,” she said.
Patel declined to speak when given the opportunity by Hurley. Sanford asked Hurley to depend on a letter Patel had written showing her remorse.
Hurley sentenced her to 30 years on the neglect charge, suspending the final 10 years, and ordered her to serve a concurrent six-year sentence on the feticide conviction. She also was ordered to serve five years’ probation.
But ours is not a sane world. It is a world ruled by carnal impulses. It is a world in which the Constitution is claimed to give a woman the RIGHT to kill her baby up until it completely leaves the wound. And, like homosexual marriage, we aren’t asked to merely be silent as we stare in shock and horror at the spectacle, it is demanded that we celebrate any woman with the pathological narcissism necessary to carry out the act.
The Guardian, It isn’t justice for Purvi Patel to serve 20 years in prison for an abortion
When women are desperate to end their pregnancies, they will. The answer to this shouldn’t be punitive, but supportive: women need better access to education, affordable contraception and abortion without harassment or delay.
Buzzfeed, I Could Have Been Purvi Patel
When I heard that an Indian-American woman named Purvi Patel had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for the contradictory charges of feticide and neglect of a child — for allegedly killing an unborn baby and allowing a live one to die — I immediately felt connected to her. I felt connected both as an Asian-American woman and one who had faced her own miscarriages — all three of them. If I had lived in Indiana, or one of the other 37 U.S. states with fetal homicide laws like the ones used against Patel, instead of in Vancouver, Canada, could I have been sentenced to 60 years in jail?
ColorLines, Why I’m So Scared by the Purvi Patel Verdict
We’ve seen for decades—basically since the day after Roe vs. Wade was passed—how people who oppose abortion have used all means possible to restrict women’s access to the procedure. When these laws shut down clinics, my stomach drops. When these laws scare providers out of practice, my heart races. But when these laws start putting women in jail for the outcome of their pregnancy, I start to feel panicked.
Whatever caused the death of Patel’s fetus, a 20-year prison sentence is frightening. It represents the next step in the worse-case scenario of anti-choice sentiment in the United States: the incarceration of women for the outcome of their pregnancies.
Contrary to what these pro-abort harpies are saying, the facts are a lot more damning. The jury found that she had procured abortion drugs and texted about taking them:
According to prosecutors in the case, Patel ordered abortion drugs online and documented taking them in text messages to a friend. In one text from July 2013, Patel allegedly said, “BTW, these pills taste like sh**. If these pills don’t work… I’m gonna be mad.”
The pills did work, but the baby, at about 24-weeks of age, survived according to testimony by the medical examiner. It’s lungs showed it had begun to breathe on its own. Patel tossed the baby in a dumpster and headed for a hospital to get treatment for what she and her apologists are framing as a miscarriage. This is tragic and inexplicable. The pro-aborts are blaming Patel’s decision to undertake a DIY abortion rather than the easily available medical abortion on Indiana’s laws and on her parents being religious. Not a peep his heard about Patel’s own decisions in this case which a) caused the pregnancy and b) resulted in her deciding to abort a baby capable of living outside the womb.
Somehow the pro-aborts are now under the impression that Patel will make a sympathetic martyr that will allow them to overturn the Indiana law that allowed Patel to be prosecuted. According to them it “targets” women. I guess they are right. It targets women in the same way laws against murder target murderers and laws against robbery target robbers. Now there is an online petition for Obama to pardon Patel (never mind that the president really can’t pardon state prisoners, it’s in the Constitution, trust me or FIFY). Or as Holly Scheer writes in The Federalist:
Americans need to remember that killing someone is not the right way to solve the difficulty his existence may present to others, said Dr. Donna Harrison, the executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
“Human beings who look at this case and can’t see the tragedy and the wrongness of killing a born baby have lost sight of the compassion that we should have for each other as human beings,” Harrison said. “This woman may be in a tragic situation, but being in a tragic situation isn’t an excuse for taking the life of another human being… We have to, as a society, be able to say we will protect the youngest and most vulnerable of our civilization. It’s a pretty vicious thing when we say you can kill anyone. And to say that it’s a women’s rights issue, to kill the most vulnerable, does that make us more of a woman?”
As I said in the beginning, in a sane society Patel’s actions would be condemned by everyone. In fact, a moderately lucid pro-abort would realize just how much of a loser this case is and join in the condemnation. But pro-aborts know they are losing the public relations battle and, like any other large rodent, when threatened and cornered they attack.
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