The Woman Who Spent 3 Years in Prison for the Death of Her Fetus Just Got Out

Purvi Patel was sentenced to 20 years behind bars.

Robert Franklin/Associated Press

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


After spending three years behind bars for the death of her fetus, 35-year-old Purvi Patel was released from the Indiana Women’s Prison on Thursday.

In 2015, Patel was convicted of feticide and neglect of a dependent after a jury found her guilty of taking abortion-inducing drugs to end her 25-week pregnancy and then failing to provide medical care to the baby when it was born. After taking the drugs in 2013, Patel experienced severe bleeding and went to a hospital for help. One of the attending physicians called the police, who found the remains of the fetus in a dumpster near Patel’s work. She was arrested and charged about a week later. After a jury trial and two years behind bars, she was sentenced to 20 years for the crimes.

Reproductive justice advocates were concerned that this could be a precedent. “What this conviction means is that anti-abortion laws will be used to punish pregnant women,” Lynn Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, said at the time.

Patel appealed the decision, and earlier this year the Indiana Court of appeals overturned the feticide conviction, calling the outcome of Patel’s case “absurd.” They ruled the state’s feticide statute should not be applied to pregnant women themselves but instead to only third parties, like a husband or boyfriend, whose violent actions result in the death of a fetus. The court also bumped the neglect charge from a class A felony to a class D and asked a lower court to resentence Patel.

That happened on Wednesday, when the judge sentenced her to 18 months behind bars. Because she’s already served about double that amount, her immediate release was ordered.

“For right now, she needs to recover from what is obviously a traumatic several years,” her lawyer, Lawrence Marshall, told the Associated Press. “She has to take her life and try to make something meaningful out of all the wreckage that got her here.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate