Unborn child innocent; US jailed pregnant woman demands release
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Representational.
Miami: In the US, a pregnant woman submitted that she wanted to be out of prison, arguing that her unborn baby is guilty of nothing and is “held unlawfully”, Agence France-Presse reported.
The lawyer of the woman, who is jailed in Florida, told AFP on Thursday, “the child didn’t have a seat at the table when the decision to incarcerate the mother was made,” AFP quoted.
The woman, 24-year-old Natalia Harrell, is charged with murder. She was accused of fatally shooting another woman while taking an Uber in Miami in July last year. She had been in jail for around seven months and was six weeks pregnant when arrested.
In a petition submitted last week, Harrelm stated that she had a gun in her purse since she feared for her life and her unborn child. Though the foetus was not involved in the crime, it remains incarcerated in deplorable conditions. If she is not granted relief, the baby will be born inside the concrete floor of a prison cell, the petition pleaded.
According to the petition, the mother did not receive proper medical care being imprisoned.
Harrell’s lawyer stated that the father-to-be hired him, and he filed the petition on behalf of the foetus, asserting that the unborn is a person.
Last June year, another pregnant woman in Texas, who received a ticket for driving in a high-occupancy carpool lane, argued that her unborn child should be treated as a second passenger, AFP reports. The case made headlines globally after it came five days after the US Supreme Court overturned the right-to-abortion ruling of Roe v Wade. The court had left the decision to each state to regulate.
According to Harrell’s lawyer, his case is not a direct result of the Supreme Court ruling but a “consequence of that”, AFP quoted. He told the news agency that it is interesting how society moves forward. People are starting to view an unborn child as a person.
