America’s criminalization of women continues: Woman charged with murder after self-induced abortion

America’s criminalization of women continues: Woman charged with murder after self-induced abortion

A Georgia woman who told doctors she took medication to self-induce an abortion was arrested and charged with malice murder, a felony that carries a possible life sentence.

According to a report from local station WALB, Kenlissa Jones, a 23-year-old mother to a toddler, is alleged to have purchased Cytotec from a retailer in Canada. Jones’ brother told WALB that she went to the hospital because she “was in a world of hurt” after taking the drug. The WALB report indicated that the fetus, estimated at just over five months gestation, was delivered en route to the hospital and died 30 minutes later.

In addition to the malice murder charge, Jones faces charges for possession of the drug she used to self-induce. Cytotec is the brand name of the drug misoprostol, used in the United States and elsewhere in combination with mifepristone in non-surgical abortion. Jones is alleged to have obtained the drugs through a Canadian retailer, but these drugs are also legally dispensed by clinics. Providers can safely dispense these medications through telemedicine, but the practice has become a target for lawmakers in states hostile to abortion rights.

A 2011 study that tracked nearly 800 patients in Iowa found that medication abortion was effective in 99 percent of telemedicine patients. There was also no difference in rates of complication, which are less than 1 percent, for telemedicine patients versus patients who had face to face counseling with a physician.

Jones’ arrest comes two months after Purvi Patel was sentenced to 30 years under Indiana’s feticide law. Patel was arrested after she sought medical attention for hemorrhaging and a doctor saw that she had a protruding umbilical cord. That doctor, as Irin Carmon at MSNBC reported, is member of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Patel maintained throughout the trial that she had miscarried and that the pregnancy had ended in stillbirth, but prosecutors used emails showing that Patel had ordered an abortion-inducing drug and texts alluding to taking them to convict her of feticide. (A toxicology report showed no traces of the drug in Patel’s system.)

Patel’s case marked the first time a woman was successfully convicted and sentenced under a feticide law, but she is not the first woman to face arrest, detention and incarceration for terminating or losing a pregnancy. In 2011, Bei Bei Shuai, also in Indiana, was charged with feticide after attempting suicide while 8 months pregnant. Shuai survived but lost the pregnancy. Shuai was incarcerated for a year before ultimately pleading to a lesser charge.

In 2010, Christine Taylor, an Iowa mother of two, sought medical care after she fell down a flight of stairs. She did not lose the pregnancy, but was charged with attempted feticide after expressing distress about an argument with her estranged husband and uncertainty about the pregnancy to the nurse charged with her care. In 2004, a Utah woman experienced a stillbirth of one of her twins and was arrested and charged with criminal homicide after the state alleged that her decision to delay her cesarean was the cause of the stillbirth.

In each of these cases, arrest was triggered after the women sought medical attention. As states escalate efforts to restrict abortion and cut funding for family planning and other programs, women who miscarry or self-induce and fear complications are left in an untenable situation: seek medical care and face arrest or avoid treatment and risk injury or death.

“The issue here is not only access to healthcare when you need it beforehand, but also access to healthcare afterward,” Elizabeth Nash, senior state issues associate with the Guttmacher Institute, told Salon. “The idea of arresting a woman seeking medical care goes against the basic principles of medical treatment.”


Read more: http://www.salon.com/2015/06/09/none_of_this_serves_a_public_health_need_america_is_criminalizing_women_for_seeking_medical_treatment/