WTF?!

[asterroc]

Someone explain to me why this woman is being brought up on charges.

Teen accused of inducing abortion given pretrial probation
6/2/2008, 9:21 p.m. EDT
The Associated Press

SALEM, Mass. (AP) — A Lawrence teenager who was accused of taking anti-ulcer pills to induce an abortion has been given pretrial probation.

Amber Abreu was 18 when she prematurely delivered a baby girl weighing just 1 1/4 pounds at a Lawrence hospital in January 2007. The baby died, and Abreu was indicted by an Essex County grand jury on a charge of procuring a miscarriage.

Salem Superior Court Judge David Lowy Monday ordered Abreu to have mental health treatment as appropriate. If she complies with the order, the case will be dismissed in April 2009.

Prosecutors alleged that Abreu had taken the drug Misoprostol in an attempt to miscarry the baby.

© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[gemini6ice.livejournal.com]

I honestly do not know.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure they exist.

At 1 1/4 pounds and 25 weeks along, the fetus was probably viable. My brother-in-law's sister gave birth to premature twins that weighed under a pound. One lived. Apparently the cutoff for "extremely premature" is 24 weeks, and 25 weeks is just "premature."

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Hm, so viability could be part of the definition, and if this was a viable fetus, then "procuring a miscarriage" would be equivalent to murder rather than abortion? Huh.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

it depends on the statute. cursory web search suggests that MA bans post-viability abortions and defines viability as after 24 weeks. It's not equivalent to murder, though, it's just that it's constitutional to ban abortions post-viability (and, possibly, also late-term but nonviable abortions; that's a grey area), so if they want to, they can. Plus, MA has procedural restrictions on abortions; a waiting period, and mothers must be given materials to explain what's going on. And only a licensed physician can perform one. Obviously this didn't happen here.

MA also has parental notification laws, but it looks like this girl was a little over 18.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

So what's the actual charge, that she didn't file appropriate paperwork? Or misusing a prescription? Or is the abortion attempt itself? It sounds like according to the thing you linked, that the law applies to the doctors, not to an individual attempting to perform an abortion on herself. Man, law's confusing.

[sammka.livejournal.com]

Well, the article says it's the abortion itself, and, considering the fact that abortions are illegal after 24 weeks, that's possible. There's also the fact that MA prohibits abortions by anyone not a qualified physician. She isn't a physician. So there are a lot of ways in which the abortion itself was illegal in this situation.

As for the failure to get informed consent, I can't find the original language, but I'd guess it applies to anyone performing an abortion, who would usually be doctors because the law requires them to be doctors. But it could apply to her as well, because, after all, she was in fact trying to perform an abortion. I'm guessing they're not charging her with that because it would be completely stupid, esp. when there are other charges (like the abortion itself) they could use.

Seriously, it looks to me like this is a complicated case. It doesn't say (and maybe it isn't known) why, after 25 whole weeks of pregnancy, she decided to try and get an abortion. She probably performed it on herself because she couldn't find a doctor willing to do it (even at around 23-24 weeks, doctors can get squeamish about it, understandably; fetuses born at that age have also lived). The fact that she was placed on suicide watch indicates that she may have had a mental health crisis that lead to her trying to abort a fetus that she'd previously accepted. In any case I don't really know whether I'd see this as a violation of anyone's right to choose in general.