|
Lucylastic -> pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges (6/25/2011 5:56:58 PM)
|
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges
Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.
Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.
Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.
Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in prison in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On December 23 she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.
Shuai survived, but she was 33 weeks' pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March, Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.
In Alabama, at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's ''chemical endangerment'' law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.
Amanda Kimbrough has been ensnared by the law in a different way. During her pregnancy her foetus was diagnosed with possible Down syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination. Kimbrough declined because she opposes abortion.
The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and lived just 19 minutes.
Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with ''chemical endangerment'' of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy - a claim she has denied.
''That shocked me, it really did,'' Kimbrough said. ''I had lost a child; that was enough.''
She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which, if she loses, will see her begin a 10-year jail sentence. ''I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids,'' she said. ''They say I'm a criminal - how do I answer that? I'm a good mother.''
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/a_new_miscarriage_of_justice_20110625/
http://www.smh.com.au/world/stillbirth-mum-up-for-murder-20110625-1gkhl.html
http://www.advocatesforpregnantwomen.org
http://www.therepublic.com/view/story/943a7829dd8141b2b1e034296572b380/IN--Rat-Poison-Baby-Death/
|
|
|
|
