Woman who miscarried, so gets 20 years in prison for feticideAn Indiana judge on Monday sentenced a 33-year-old woman, Purvi Patel
to 20 years in prison on charges of feticide and neglect of a dependent.Patel is the first woman in Indiana, will be sentenced under the state feticide law. Activists say the case highlights the way in which the prosecutors in
the United States are increasingly using laws to protect expectant
mothers to criminalize women for pregnancy termination or alleged harm
an unborn baby.In
2013, Patel was after seeking help in an emergency room for excessive
bleeding, arrested with an umbilical cord from her vagina out. She told first staff they have not been pregnant, but then revealed
that she had given birth at her home in Granger, Indiana, according to
court documents.Patel said an investigator that she thought the fetus was not alive
and they left it in a plastic bag in a dumpster in front of her parents'
house.A police investigation again the fetus and calculated Patel with her baby killing."I assumed that because the baby was dead nothing to do," said the
South Bend Tribune, a local newspaper reported that she said in an
interview that the police was carried out just hours after they admitted
to the hospital."I've never been in this situation. I've never been pregnant before,"
she reportedly told the police from the hospital while recovering from
sedation and loss of blood before they had legal counsel.Reproductive rights advocates say Patel case is not the first case in which a woman accused in the fetal homicide laws.Although
the laws have 
been dealing for use with crimes against pregnant women
and illegal abortion providers aim, they are increasingly being used to
prosecute women who have a miscarriage, stillbirth, try to end their own
pregnancies or to harm a fetus with drugs, accused by Sara Ainsworth, legal director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW)."We
are very concerned that this case is a trend in pregnancy for her
pregnancy to punish results and shows that women be targeted for
termination of pregnancy, even if abortion opponents claim routinely
that if abortion in the United States criminalized, not pregnant woman would be punished, "she said.Lynn Paltrow, NAPW Executive Director, also notes that the fees for Patel seem contradictory. "It is puzzling why a prosecutor would be allowed to bring such contradictory charges," Paltrow told Think Progress. "How can you have both caused to terminate a pregnancy and giving birth to a baby that you neglect?"A study of NAPW and Fordham University, documented since 1973, the
arrest of pregnant women in the US, found that black women and
economically disadvantaged women are disproportionately targeted by
feticide laws.Indiana's
feticide law was previously only once a case against a colored woman,
an immigrant was invoked brought from China, also. In this case, the woman tried to commit suicide while she was pregnant. She survived, but the baby died, and the woman was charged with feticide. She pleaded guilty to criminal recklessness, after more than a year in jail.When
Patel was also controversial for other reasons - the pathologist who
determines that Patel fetus lived used an outdated medical method that
involves immersing into the lungs in water and see if they float,
reported slate. When they appear, it is taken as evidence that the fetus was born alive.Patel
told investigators in a hospital interview that she excited about a
pregnancy, but text messages and search records later showed a jury that
they were judged online abortion-inducing drug - misoprostol and
mifepristone - and texted a friend termination of her pregnancy, the South Bend Tribune reports.She said she had bought two drugs from a site in Hong Kong, and began to send them in July 2013, according to court documents.A toxicology report showed, however, no traces of drugs in blood Patel. And Patel's lawyer said after the South Bend Tribune that the police no evidence that the drugs could find actually purchased.Patel
lawyers said they are afraid of her pregnancy to her parents, which was
rejected by extra-marital sex openly, Think Progress reported. Patel defense is expected to appeal.