Posted on 10/19/2021 4:49:02 PM PDT by Morgana
A 21-year-old woman in Oklahoma has been found guilty of first-degree manslaughter after suffering a miscarriage last year.
On Oct. 5, Brittney Poolaw was sentenced to four years in prison for her 2020 miscarriage. An autopsy on the unborn child revealed it had died at 17 weeks gestation.
Prosecutors on the case blamed Poolaw’s miscarriage on her drug use. However, some advocates for the mother, such as the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, have argued that her conviction is not in line with the law.
“Oklahoma’s murder and manslaughter laws do not apply to miscarriages, which are pregnancy losses that occur before 20 weeks, a point in pregnancy before a fetus is viable (able to survive outside of the womb),” said the NAPW, a non-profit advocacy organization, in a statement on Wednesday.
Under the law, a mother cannot be prosecuted for causing the death of their unborn child “unless the mother committed a crime” that caused its death.
In Oct. 2020, the Lawton Constitution reported that Poolaw was accused of causing her child to be stillborn on January 4, 2020, due to her intravenous methamphetamine use.
An affidavit said the woman, who was 19 at the time, was taken to Comanche County Memorial Hospital after she reportedly gave birth at home, per the report. Poolaw later admitted to medical staff she had consumed meth and marijuana and tested positive for both.
The medical examiner’s report listed the unborn child’s cause of death as intrauterine fetal demise due to maternal meth use, the Constitution reported. A toxicology report on the fetus showed the brain and liver had tested positive for meth and amphetamine.
At trial, however, an OBGYN that testified for the state said that controlled substances may not have directly caused of death for the fetus.
The NAPW also argued that blaming Poolaw’s miscarriage on her use of controlled substances is “contrary to all medical science.”
Another misleading headline.
Everything you ingest or inject enters the child also.
It did kinda fail to say she suffered the miscarriage because she was on meth but still she suffered one. It was her fault it happened. I can also just bet she was not getting pre natal care while on drugs.
How is it misleading?
This seems like the wrong way to deal with a miscarriage, no matter what the circumstance. Nobody wins.
Too bad the judge cannot offer an option of prison time, community service, and/or sterilization.
If she had gone to Planned Abortionhood all would be well.
If a man made her take those drugs he’d be charged
But she takes them voluntarily and she skates charges
Gynosocietal hypocrisy to the extreme
This is not a repeat from Ecuador or some other Third World country?
Even after birth if the child is breast feeding.
It was amazing to see how minute changes in my wife's diet could affect her. For example, when udaughter was 3 months old we did the obligatory road trip so relatives could see the new baby. Not long on the trip she was miserable, gassy and cranky. At home we normally drank purified water, but on the trip we drank whatever water was available. When my aunt asked asked about water she told us to buy some bottled water. Within 24 hours of my wife switching back to purified water all of our daughter's discomforts disappeared.
Community service is a joke in this country.
It isn’t a crime to shoot Meth?
Every drug overdose is either murder, attempted murder, suicide or attempted suicide. It’s even more complicated if pregnancy is involved.
She’d be golden if she called her meth an abortion pill.
She only lost a fetus, an unviable tissue mass, so how could she be guilty of taking a life?
Like the jabs...?
Yes.
I attest to that. My friend and I were in the same room having our babies on Halloween night. We got hold of caramel candies and, hey didn’t know it would give the babies the poops. OOPS!
Because it sounds like she killed someone negligently after she had a miscarriage.
Or, that she was pregnant awaiting trial for some killing, and had a miscarriage before getting verdict.
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