Feticide case could set precedent for pregnant women

Pregnant women do not have the constitutional right to the control of their own bodies.

That is the view that, Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, is striving to abolish from the United States legal system.

Law Students for Reproductive Justice, the Feminist Law Forum and the American Constitution Society brought Paltrow to speak on reproductive justice and the case of Bei Bei Shuai v. the State of Indiana at the Maurer School of Law on Friday.
 
Paltrow said the Shuai case could set the precedent for cases involving pregnant women and fetuses.

“The question is will the state of Indiana be the first state to declare itself as one where pregnant women are treated as separate and unequal persons,” Paltrow said.

Bei Bei Shaui, an Indiana resident who emigrated from China, is facing charges of murder and attempted feticide after she attempted suicide while pregnant in her third trimester in 2010.

Shaui took rat poison after learning that her boyfriend and father of her baby was married and returning to his estranged family. Friends brought her to the hospital, and Angel Shaui was born on New Year’s Eve.

But Angel died in Shaui’s arms three days later, and after receiving treatment for lingering depression, Bei Bei was arrested and charged by the state. The case has been delayed, but a new time for the trial has not been set.

Jim Spangler, a second year law student who attended Paltrow’s speech, said the charges are “ridiculous.”

“The biggest problem is that it took a behavior that was totally legal and made it illegal because she pregnant,” he said, referring to Shaui’s suicide attempt.

Paltrow, who recently published a peer-reviewed study on the arrests of and forced interventions on pregnant women, said these cases are occurring in every region in the country.

She calls the concept the “new Jane Crow” laws.

“What a new Jane Crow refers to is a system of separate and unequal law for pregnant and fertile women,” Paltrow said. “It relegates them to a permanent underclass status and removes them from the community of constitutional persons.”

The feticide statute under which Shuai is charged was a post-Roe state law passed in 1979 that made the fetus a separate victim in crimes against pregnant women that caused her to miscarry or die, Paltrow explained.

Thirty eight states now have similar homicide of a viable fetus or feticide laws she said.

“Each and every one of those laws was passed after an event of extreme violence against women,” she said. “They hijack the debate about the violence against women to establishing the treatment of eggs, embryos and fetuses as separate from the women.”

Jessica Jackson-McLain, a second-year law student at IU, said Paltrow was very persuasive.

“She makes a wonderful point even for people who would traditionally oppose abortion,” Jackson-McLain said. “It’s also about treating women differently just because they are pregnant.”

LSRJ will send a group of students to Indianapolis April 6 for a rally protesting the Bei Bei Shuai case and promoting reproductive justice. The rally will be at 2 p.m. outside of the City-County Building, 200 E. Washington St.

“Speak on behalf of Bei Bei Shuai. Speak on behalf of women,” Paltrow said. “Come to the rally on April 6 and demonstrate that you support a culture of life that includes and values the lives of pregnant women, whatever the outcome of their pregnancies.”