US women charged with murder following miscarriage...

In a growing number of US states, pregnant women who miscarry their babies are being criminalized, some charged with murder. Ultimately, the move by state prosecutors is more widely aimed at stripping women of the legal right to abortion sanctioned by the US Supreme Court in its 1971 ruling in Roe v. Wade.

In 2006 in Mississippi, Rennie Gibbs, who became pregnant at the age of 15, lost her baby in a stillbirth at 36 weeks into the pregnancy. Prosecutors charged her with the “depraved-heart murder” of her child after they discovered she had abused cocaine, although there was no evidence that the baby’s death was connected to the mother’s substance abuse. The murder charge carries a mandatory life sentence.

Some 70 organizations across the US have filed amicus briefs in support of Ms. Gibbs in this ongoing case. In particular, they take aim at the claims by anti-abortion forces that such prosecutions protect mothers and their unborn children. One of the briefs says that to treat “as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering.” More...

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