Indiana woman convicted for self-abortion sparks debate over women's reproductive rights

The 20-year-long sentence handed down to a 33-year-old Indiana woman in connection with her own miscarriage has sparked a steaming debate over women's reproductive rights and abortion in the state.

On February 3, as Purvi Patel became the first Indiana woman to be convicted of feticide, legal experts said that the sentence handed down to her for feticide and neglect of a dependent was one of the most severe penalties an American woman had faced for ending her own pregnancy, reported USA Today.

The Granger woman had arrived at the St. Joseph Hospital emergency room on July 13, 2013, with blood dripping from her pelvis. Initially, she denied that she had delivered a baby however, after being pressed by the doctors, she conceded that she had miscarried and discarded the body in a dumpster.

During the trial, witnesses described Patel as a woman who conceived a child as a result of an affair with a married man and hid the pregnancy from her religiously conservative family. However, after probing other possible motives, prosecutors found a series of text messages sent to a friend and emails sent to a company that sold abortion drugs over the internet.

Patel's conviction under a state statute adopted in 1979 to fight illegal abortion clinics has raised several questions among legal scholars, medical examiners and women's rights advocates about how much control women should have during their pregnancies and if they could be held criminally responsible when something went wrong.

David Orentlicher, a professor at the Robert H. McKinney School of Law in Indianapolis, said that the law meant that women would have to worry that if they did something that could be viewed as something harmful to their fetus, they could invite a legal case.