Is a Stillbirth an Act of Murder? Maryland Law Says So

[babylonsister]

Is a Stillbirth an Act of Murder? Maryland Law Says So

By Lindsay Beyerstein, In These Times. Posted August 17, 2007.

Maryland’s Viable Fetus Act displays the coercive potential of legislation that gives fetuses rights at the expense of women.

Christy Lynn Freeman, a 37-year-old, Ocean City, Md., woman, was recently charged with murder after delivering a stillborn child under Maryland's as-yet-untested Viable Fetus Act of 2005.

Worcester County prosecutor Joel J. Todd charged Freeman with murder and a district court judge held her without bail for allegedly performing her own late-term abortion. Though these charges were eventually dropped, Freeman's case illustrates the coercive potential of legislation that gives fetuses rights at the expense of women.

Freeman arrived at Atlantic General Hospital by ambulance on July 26, bleeding profusely. She denied that she had ever been pregnant, but doctors found a placenta and an umbilical cord inside her body. Later, she admitted that she had given birth to a stillborn fetus at home.

After questioning Freeman at the hospital, police searched her home and found the recently stillborn infant and three older sets of fetal remains in and around her property.

The medical examiner's preliminary report confirmed Freeman's story that the 26-week-old fetus was born dead. Nevertheless, Freeman was charged with first- and second-degree murder and manslaughter for allegedly inducing the stillbirth.

more...

http://www.alternet.org/rights/59887/

[ecstatic]

1. She kept the fetuses around... why?

A friend of mine suspects that it's because her boyfriend forced her to get rid of the babies/fetuses, and she kept the remains around for sentimental reasons.

[Warpy]

2. This case requires close examination and the wisdom of Solomon

not a murder charge.

Obviously, there is something going on here besides infanticide. It's got to be extreme cruelty from the boyfriend or severe mental retardation in both or insanity in both or a combination of all of it.

She needs mental health care. Good luck to her on getting in it in a country that views all disease, especially mental disease, as a moral failure and poor consumer choice.

[iamahaingttta]

3. I was all ready to be outraged...

...at the state of Maryland, but after reading the article, I must say that whatever the state can do to get that woman removed from the rest of society is alright by me.

Sick...

[sinkingfeeling]

4. Could someone explain how one goes about 'inducing the stillbirth'?

[piedmont]

7. Meth.

"Her son was stillborn at 32 weeks gestation. When the son tested positive for methamphetamine, Hernandez was charged with murder."

[blondeatlast]

9. That does put a different spin on it. Still I find this worrisome.

I had a healthy, but very high risk preganancy with my only child. Would I be subject to investigation/prosecution if I had fudged on treating my chronic illness just a little if he ended up stillborn?

It was a very delicate balancing act and I did end up in the hospital twice prior to him being born.

[piedmont]

12. Sorry, not meth in this particular case. See below. nt

[bleedingheart]

5. I knew a woman who had 20 miscarriages

the first few were traumatic...but as she lost more of the pregnancies...(all at varying times in the mid-term)...she would get weirder and more protective of the pregnancy and the baby...

At one point her mental state was so frail that it would not surprise me if she would have kept a fetus...

Luckily she did have one pregnancy that went to full term...but the poor kid had her mother hang over her like a hawk until she left for college...

[piedmont]

6. She's not being charged under the new law. She admitted killing one of her babies four years ago.

"On July 31, the authorities announced that Freeman admitted to killing at least one live infant that she delivered in secret several years ago.

Prosecutors dismissed the murder charges for the stillbirth on August 2. She is now facing ordinary murder charges for killing a live infant."


"Her son was stillborn at 32 weeks gestation. When the son tested positive for methamphetamine, Hernandez was charged with murder."

Fucking meth. I should have figured it was behind a bat-shit-ass crazy story like this.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

10. The methamphetamine case was a different woman.

Not Freeman, but Hernandez.

On July 31, the authorities announced that Freeman admitted to killing at least one live infant that she delivered in secret several years ago.

Prosecutors dismissed the murder charges for the stillbirth on August 2. She is now facing ordinary murder charges for killing a live infant. Although prosecutor Joel Todd told reporters that Freeman was being charged for killing an infant born alive in 2003, the charging document says that the infant died in 2004. (Todd's spokesperson could not be reached for comment.)

Thirty-six states have some kind of fetal homicide law on the books. While Maryland's law applies only to viable fetuses, at least 15 states extend fetal homicide protection from conception. In state legislatures around the country, anti-abortionists have fought for laws that recognize the killing of fetuses as criminal acts on the grounds that full-fledged personhood begins in utero.

Freeman isn't the only woman to face murder charges for a pregnancy loss. Theresa Lee Hernandez of Oklahoma has spent the last three years in jail awaiting trial for "murder" after a late-term pregnancy loss. Her son was stillborn at 32 weeks gestation. When the son tested positive for methamphetamine, Hernandez was charged with murder.

Just clarifying that for the sake of clarification.

[piedmont]

11. Whoops! That's what I get for not paying enough attention!

Thanks for the catch.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

14. Not a problem

I just figured there's enough confusion surrounding this case already without adding more.

[BlooInBloo]

8. self-delete - Don't understand the story well enough to have an opinion.

[China_cat]

13. A dear friend of mine is dating this woman's adoptive mother.

The girl has a bunch of learning deficits (probably spent her first year getting cornstarch in water in place of milk in a Guatamalan orphanage--at 8 months, the girl weighed 8 pounds) and her coping mechanism is to go along with what other people say. The cops think they have a confession, but a court-ordered forensic psychologist thinks she is not competent to waive her Miranda rights.

It's a mess.

[Javaman]

15. Handmaids tale. nt

[ComerPerro]

16. miscarriages will result in legal investigations once Repigs get their way with abortion