Life Links 7/23/13

RH RealityCheck has another post in which a child who was born alive and left to die in a dumpster is described as a fetus.  RHReality Check’s Senior Legal Analyst Jessica Mason Pieklo has this description of local authorities prosecuting a woman who left her child (who was born around 30 weeks gestation and whom the coroner says breathed after being born alive) to die in a dumpster then lied about giving birth and the child’s gestational age to authorities.

The State of Indiana is prosecuting another woman for a failed pregnancy, this time charging a woman with felony neglect after a fetus was found in a dumpster. Prosecutors had originally considered charging the woman with feticide, like in the case of Bei Bei Shuai. Either way, the state has made it clear any pregnancy that does not result in a successful live birth will be viewed first and foremost as a probable crime, which is a terrifying reality for women in the state.             

It wasn’t a failed pregnancy and the reason the state didn't charge her with feticide was because the child wasn't a fetus.  The evidence clearly suggests that Purvi Patel ordered abortion drugs online, took them, gave birth to an approximately 30-week child at her home, and then disposed of her child (who was born alive) in a dumpster.  Pregnancies that don't result in successful live births will probably only be viewed as a possible crime if the mothers lie about being pregnant, lie about their gestational age, and dump their born alive child in a dumpster.


The New York Times has a promotional puff piece on Senator Wendy Davis.  I’ve seen EMILY’s List e-mails promoting candidates less effusively than this. 

She was an overnight sensation.

In short order, she pumped life into the moribund Texas Democratic Party, recharged the state’s women’s movement, raised nearly $1 million in two weeks for her re-election campaign and, not least, was beseeched by supporters and some in her party to run for governor in 2014, which might be a quixotic quest in a state that has not elected a Democrat to that office in 20 years.

A building with an abortion clinic in El Paso has a “for lease” sign in the window but clinic employees say the clinic doesn’t plan on closing. 

But a woman who answered the phone at the Hill Top Women's Reproductive Clinic on Schuster Avenue said it had no plans to close. Another woman who returned a phone call said another building on the same property had been up for lease for several years.

Two people in India are being held after a young woman died after an abortion. 

Police said the victim and the man, identified as Deepak from Dadri, had been in a relationship. On realizing that the victim was pregnant, Deepak arranged for an abortion. He took the victim to a quack, Nisha Rani, who allegedly performed an illegal abortion on July 18. During the procedure, the victim allegedly became serious which scared Deepak. He then decided to rush her to Naveen Hospital where he abandoned the victim and fled, police said.