St. Joseph County Police via WNDU

Indiana Sentences Purvi Patel to 20 Years for Feticide

By Jennifer Chowdhury

On Monday, the state of Indiana sentenced 33-year-old Purvi Patel to 20 years in prison on charges of feticide--an act that causes the death of a fetus--and and neglect of a dependent.

She received a 30-year-sentence on the felony neglect charge, 10 of which were suspended.

A six-year sentence for feticide will be served concurrently.

Patel is the first woman in the U.S. to be charged, convicted and sentenced on a feticide charge.

Reproductive rights activists are outraged.

"What this conviction means is that anti-abortion laws will be used to punish pregnant woman," says Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director for National Advocates for Pregnant Woman.

More states propose new abortion restrictions.

Patel was arrested in July 2013 after she went to the emergency room, bleeding heavily, at St. Joseph Hospital in Mishawaka, Indiana. 

Despite initially denying the pregnancy, Patel eventually admitted to medical authorities that she had a miscarriage and threw the stillborn fetus in a dumpster. 

According to Sue Ellen Braunlin, doctor and co-president of the Indiana Religious Coalition for Reproductive Justice, Purvi was most likely 23-24 weeks pregnant, although prosecutors argued Patel was 25 weeks along in the state's opening argument. 

The prosecution confirmed on Monday that the baby died within seconds of being born. 

Patel's lawyers argued that she panicked when she realized she was in labor. 

Patel comes from a conservative Hindu family that looks down on sex outside marriage, and the pregnancy was a result of an affair Patel had with her co-worker. 

"Purvi Patel's conviction amounts to punishment for having a miscarriage and then seeking medical care, something that no woman should worry would lead to jail time," said Deepa Iyer, Activist-in-Residence at the University of Maryland's Asian American's Studies and former director of South Asian Americans Leading Together.

Despite Patel's claim that she gave birth to a stillborn child, prosecutors argued that Patel gave birth to a live fetus and charged her with child neglect.

Prosecutors also claimed that Patel ordered abortion-inducing drugs online and tried to terminate her pregnancy, but a toxicology report failed to find evidence of any drugs in her system.

"Instead of receiving the medical support and counseling she so desperately needed, the state charged her with murder and attempted feticide."

Patel is the first woman to be sentenced under Indiana's feticide laws but she isn't the first woman to be charged.

In 2011, Bei Bei Shuai, a Chinese American-woman, was held in prison for a year before feticide charges against her were dropped as part of a plea deal.

Shuai was reportedly suffering from depression and tried to commit suicide while pregnant.

She survived, but the fetus did not.

"Instead of receiving the medical support and counseling [Shuai] so desperately needed, the state charged her with murder and attempted feticide," said Iyer.

Iyer says that the fact that the only two women charged with infanticide are Asian American is important to note because women of color often lack access to basic health care, counseling, and other reproductive health resources.

"Immigrant women of color, such as Bei Bei and Purvi, remain vulnerable to the exploitation of laws like these in a myriad of ways, as we have seen in how they have been treated by the state of Indiana," said Iyer.

"The cultural issues that the prosecution decided to drag into this case reflect stereotypes about Asian-American women and reproductive health which may not necessarily be true in this case."

The Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law's 2013 study on arrests and forced interventions on pregnant women in the U.S. found that approximately 71 percent were low-income women and 59 percent were women of color.

Dot,

Scientists are rubber-necking at the Smithsonian's "Hall of Human Origins." 

The exhibit explains that climate change has nothing to do with man-made pollution and that humans will eventually evolve around the effects of climate change.

David Koch bankrolled the exhibit with $15 million--and he didn't stop there. 

He sits on the Board of the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History, and helped funnel $1.2 million to a climate-denier scientist who's on the Smithsonian's payroll. 

The conflict of interest couldn't be clearer than if it were etched in stone.

Science museums are where people go to learn about the world from top scientists--there shouldn't be any conflicts of interest from oil and gas billionaires. 

But for the Koch Brothers, the Smithsonian and American Museum of Natural History are just another channel to peddle debunked, scientifically inaccurate misinformation about climate change.

Climate-denier David Koch shouldn't be anywhere near these museums’ boards. 

We're joining with the new Natural History Museum, Forecast the Facts, Environmental Action and several other organizations to call on the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History to do the right thing and kick David Koch to the curb!

Tell the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History History to kick David Koch off their board! 

We'll deliver the petition signatures to the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian right before their board meetings, so their leadership knows where the public stands.

Public outcry isn't the only pressure these science museums are feeling over David Koch.

The world's top scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners, signed onto a letter asking that the Smithsonian and American Museum of Natural History cut all ties to the fossil fuel industry.

The Koch Brothers are trying--yet again--to use their gigantic wallets to buy influence without facing any consequences. 

But, thankfully, activists like you and me aren't willing to let them get away with it.

When the Koch Brothers tried to buy-out the Tribune Company newspapers, citizen uproar forced them to back out of the deal. 

When they tried to use PBS to censor the documentary "Citizen Koch," we mobilized activists across the country to air the film and protest PBS until Charles Koch stepped down from PBS's board.

Now, we're aiming the fight at two of the largest science museums in the country. 

The Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History should be beacons of knowledge, not a conflict of interest.

Tell the Smithsonian and the American Museum of Natural History History to kick David Koch to the curb!

In solidarity,

Dan Cantor
National Director
Working Families

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There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Bertrand Russell

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Police Brutality

By Mychal Denzel Smith

March 24, 2015--Before he became the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson sat down to compose the Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” he wrote.

At the time, he was a slave-owner.

Hypocrisy aside, there’s a “duh” factor in saying “all men are created equal,” but Jefferson must have found value in the proclamation of a self-evident truth.

The fact that he needed to spell it out might have reflected the reality that we didn’t then live in a world where all men were treated equally—and we don’t now.

On July 13, George Zimmerman was acquitted on murder charges for killing Trayvon Martin.

Immediately thereafter, Alicia Garza, an organizer and special projects director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, took to Facebook to write her own self-evident truth:

“Black Lives Matter.”

At once powerful and haunting, those three words have been embraced as the banner under which a new generation of activists and organizers is building a movement for racial justice.

Like Jefferson’s “all men,” the statement is undeniable in its truth.

But unlike the celebrated founding father, Garza’s words do not echo a hypocrisy.

Instead, they challenge a nation that has failed to live up to its stated belief that “all men are created equal.”

I sat down with Garza, in the first of a series of interviews with the three creators of Black Lives Matter, on February 21, 2015, the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, and we spoke about imagining a world where the fact that “Black Lives Matter” is self-evident.

Where in America Are Black People Safe From Racism?

Nowhere.

My hope is that no Starbucks barista anywhere dares write "Race Together" on anyone's latte and decides to have a “conversation about race” with customers who simply wanted to pay too much for a cup of coffee.

Not only is it extra work for which employees are not being compensated, my gut tells me these conversations will go down with as much awkwardness and anger as the 1975 Saturday Night Live "Word Association" sketch with Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor, “in which tensions rise as racial slurs are exchanged, boiling over when Chase drops the infamous N-word and Pryor responses with a death threat.”

However, if there is a barista out there just dying to take part in their CEO’s new campaign, I hope they choose only white people to “Race Together” with, and I hope they ask only one question: Where in America are black people safe from racism?

At home?

In the street?

In the car?

Public transportation?

At work?

Where in America Are Black People Safe From Racism?

Nowhere.