Patel is the first woman in the U.S. to be convicted and sentenced under feticide laws for terminating her own pregnancy. The laws, which were initially passed to protect women from illegal abortions, prohibit “knowingly or intentionally terminat[ing] a human pregnancy.”
Patel’s child neglect conviction was based on a doctor’s testimony that the fetus, which was found dead in a dumpster after Patel reported that she had put it there after delivering it stillborn, could probably have survived at birth. The feticide conviction was based on the court’s finding that she had unsuccessfully tried to induce an abortion with pills she purchased over the Internet.