Abortion Advocates Defend Woman Who Threw Her 25-30 Week-Old Newborn Son in the Dumpster

Opinion   |   Dave Andrusko   |   May 26, 2016   |   3:01PM   |   Indianapolis, IN

Pro-abortionists are often either too cute for their own good and/or believe the public can be bamboozled if they scream loud enough into believing anything.

If you were to read the pro-abortion blogosphere (which I do so you won’t have to), Purvi Patel is the innocent victim of an overzealous prosecutor. As they habitually do, they attempt to make a martyr out of someone whose behavior most people–and I do mean most–would find abhorrent.

To be clear this is not the case of the Tennessee woman who, according to police, decided to self-abort “by filling a bathtub with a few inches of water, then used a coat hanger to repeatedly stab her baby,” as Sam Stockard of the Murfreesboro Post, reported. She grew “alarmed and concerned for her safety” when she saw a great deal of blood in the tub, and her boyfriend took her to St. Thomas Rutherford Hospital emergency room,” Stockard wrote. “From there, she was transported to St. Thomas Mid-Town in Nashville where staff members saved ‘Baby Yocca,’ according to police.”

Keep up with the latest pro-life news and information on Twitter.

The 24-week baby, who weighed a pound and a half at birth, suffered massive injuries, according to Stockard.

He will need a medically-experienced foster parent, remain on oxygen and take medication daily because of problems with his eyes, lungs and heart stemming from damage caused by the coat hanger. Medical staff also said other physical problems will arise when the child grows older.

Last year St. Joseph Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Hurley sentenced Patel to 20 years in prison for throwing her live-born 25-30-week old newborn son into a dumpster following a chemically-induced abortion in 2013. Her lawyers want the conviction thrown out. On Monday a three-judge panel of the Indiana Court of Appeals heard both sides.

There are many very important questions that arise. A key point in Patel’s appeal (as the AP explained)

contends she should not have been convicted of neglect, arguing prosecutors failed to prove she knew she had delivered a live baby or that she could have done anything to save its life. It argues that summoning medical help would have been “futile,” citing a forensic pathologist’s testimony that the infant likely would have died within about a minute.

There are several possible responses.

On Monday Chief Judge Nancy Vaidik (according to reporter Christian Sheckler writing for the South Bend Tribune) “challenged [one of Patel’s attorney’s] argument that Patel could not have saved the baby by calling for medical help.”

“If someone has cancer and only has hours to live and someone shoots them, that person is guilty of murder,” Vaidik said. “You don’t say, ‘oh, he only had five hours to live.’ That’s what I’m struggling with.”

My question would be this. They insist the baby only lived for a very brief time, so Patel couldn’t/shouldn’t be convicted of child neglect.

But what if the baby had refused to die and Patel “out of panic,” smothered the 25-30-week-old unborn baby or threw the still living baby in the same dumpster?

Pro-abortionists (at least in the accounts I’ve read) skirt around that issue. In other contexts they don’t.

But consider: if there is an absolute right to abortion, why should the mere fact that the baby survived have anything to do with anything? The objective is a dead baby and if the mother “fails” using a coat hanger or a chemical abortifacient, how can she “neglect” someone whose death she foresaw and planned and fully intended to make come to pass?

The obvious response is that if a baby survives–whether the abortion takes place in or out of an abortion clinic, with or without an abortionist’s assistance–there ought to be an affirmative obligation to do what you can to save the baby, knowing, of course, that the baby’s chances are limited by the violence that has inflicted on her.

In the stories, principally from the South Bend Tribune and WSBT, we learned a lot about how Patel considered her baby. During last year’s trial, I quoted WSBT’s Kelli Stopczynski who did an admirable job of summarizing and quoting from the prosecution’s closing argument.

The state told jurors Patel’s intent was to give herself an illegal abortion, and that’s what prosecutors say she did.

“This whole production is about a little boy” said Deputy Prosecutor Mark Roule. “He wasn’t expected, he wasn’t wanted. He lived a brief and horrible life. What happened to him was very, very wrong.”

Roule reminded jurors about details they’ve already heard–that the baby was born on the bathroom floor at Patel’s home. She wrapped him in plastic bags and put him in a dumpster behind Moe’s Southwest Grill in Mishawaka — a restaurant her family owns.

Then, when her pain and bleeding wouldn’t stop, Patel went to the emergency room.

“She continued to lie to doctors and nurses — she tried to keep secret the fact that she’d been responsible for another life and done nothing,” Roule said.

Then, six months of text messages between Purvi Patel and her best friend about her irregular period, a positive pregnancy test in June and the abortion pills she ordered online and took, according to those texts.

According to WNDU, Channel 16

Patel’s attitude was perhaps captured in a text to a friend that read, “Just lost the baby. I’m going to clean up my bathroom floor and then go to Moe’s.”

LifeNews.com Note: Dave Andrusko is the editor of National Right to Life News and an author and editor of several books on abortion topics. This post originally appeared in at National Right to Life News Today —- an online column on pro-life issues.

purvipatel2