Purvi Patel was bleeding through her layers of clothing when she arrived, alone, at the emergency room in Mishawaka, Indiana on the night of July 13, 2013. “I was feeling very disoriented, weak,” she later testified. “Physically, I was in pain.” She told medical staff she had passed “clots.” She said she thought she was 10 to 12 weeks pregnant.
For weeks, Patel, who lived with her religious, Indian immigrant parents and disabled grandparents, had been texting her friend Fay about cramps and missed periods. Maybe it was just stress, she said. Patel had been keeping her relationship with a coworker secret from her family. Her friend knew. She convinced Patel to take a pregnancy test, which came out positive. “My Fam would kill me n him,” Patel texted her friend, according to court filings. “I’m just not ready for it.”
At the hospital that night, she kept texting her friend, which the medical staff found strange for a woman in distress. They later described her as having a “flat affect.” Examining her, the obstetrician-gynecologists became alarmed: they saw signs of a far more developed pregnancy. Where was the baby? Had it been moving when it was born? Patel said it had not. She had placed the remains in a dumpster.
By then, Patel had lost about 20 percent of her blood, and needed surgery for the placenta that she had not yet passed. Shortly before rushing out of the hospital to search for what he believed could be a live baby, one of the doctors called the police.
When Patel woke up from sedation, there was a police officer stationed by her bed. Now, as the first woman in the United States to be convicted of feticide for having an illegal abortion, she faces 20 years in prison. Judges will hear her appeal Monday.
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