Indiana Injustice: Purvi Patel’s feticide case is a call to action
Indiana Injustice
Purvi Patel’s feticide case is a call to action
BEFORE JULY 2013, PURVI PATEL LIVED A RELATIVELY PRIVATE LIFE IN SOUTH BEND, Indiana. Patel, a 33-year-old Indian American woman, worked at her family’s restaurant and took care of her parents and ailing grandparents. Over the past year and a half, though, Patel’s life has been upended. She is the first woman in the United States to be convicted and sent to prison for feticide.
In July 2013, Patel went to the emergency room at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center—a part of Trinity Health, one of the largest Catholic health-care systems in the U.S.—seeking help for heavy vaginal bleeding. Patel did not immediately tell medical staff that she had been pregnant and had suffered a miscarriage, but upon examination one of the doctors discovered an umbilical cord protruding from her body, and that’s when Patel’s story took a horrible turn. The doctor, Kelly Wayne McGuire, called the police. Then he left the hospital to join police to search for the fetal remains.
Meanwhile, Patel remained hospitalized. When she awoke in the early hours of the morning, she was greeted by police officers who immediately began an interrogation. They demanded to know the identity of the father and, as described by Emma Selm of the Indiana Religious Coalition for Reproductive Justice, who says she watched a recording of the interrogation, asked, “Was he Indian too?”
A month later, Patel was charged with feticide and neglect of a dependent—two seemingly contradictory charges—on the theory that she attempted to selfabort her pregnancy but that the fetus survived and was abandoned. During the trial, prosecutors presented little evidence that Patel had attempted an abortion. They claimed that Patel had ingested an abortifacient, but only cited a few emails and text messages from Patel to a friend that said she had obtained the drugs, and according to Patel’s attorney, a toxicology report showed no evidence of abortifacients in her body or in the fetus.
One of the pieces of evidence used by the prosecutors on the neglect charge was a “lung float test,” where the fetal lungs are placed in water to see if they float. This test, developed in the 17th century, has been questioned by numerous forensic pathologists and in well-respected pathology textbooks. The theory goes that if the lungs float, the baby took a breath— meaning it was alive at birth. But pathologists have disputed that claim and Patel testified that she attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, which could have delivered air to the fetal lungs.
A jury found Patel guilty on both charges, and on March 30, 2015, she was given a 41-year sentence, of which she will serve 20 years in prison.
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http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2015/Patel.asp