Pregnant woman miscarriages due to alleged cocaine use, gets charged with murder

[newmom]

at 36 weeks, that child could survive outside the womb and probably without any help from machines, example.

She is 15, obviously should be held accountable for her actions but I'm not quite sold on murder charges, unless it can be directly linked to the stillborn. Obviously doing bumps while preggo isn't to bright.

[kiwiol]

Are you really that stupid? Wait.....

No, but your mom is, for not swallowing you

[GroinkTropin]

So the liberals on this forum do not follow the simplest logic.

Let me break it down NICE AND SLOW

IF

YOU

ABUSE

DRUGS

AND

YOU

ARE

CARRYING A CHILD, OF ANY LEVEL OF DEVELOPMENT

YOU

MUST

BE

HELD

ACCOUNTABLE

FOR

YOUR

ACTIONS

OTHERWISE

PEOPLE

WILL

DO

WHATEVER THE FUCK THEY WANT

AND HURT THE INNOCENT

I

CAN

NOT

MAKE

THAT

ANY

SIMPLER

[newmom]

Mike, so what about women that have a few cigs or a few glasses of wine during pregnancy. We know it's not good for either but MANYYYYY women have had healthy babies while doing so.

So what if (yes not likely) she had a few toots and that was it during the pregnancy. Or a woman that has a glass of wine before she knew that she was pregnant or for arguments sake in the last month. Baby was born still born. What then

[outby43]

Mike, so what about women that have a few cigs or a few glasses of wine during pregnancy. We know it's not good for either but MANYYYYY women have had healthy babies while doing so.

So what if (yes not likely) she had a few toots and that was it during the pregnancy. Or a woman that has a glass of wine before she knew that she was pregnant or for arguments sake in the last month. Baby was born still born. What then

Exactly.  This girl was probably not doing an 8-ball a day.  I have gotten more amped up on dietary supplements than coke.  I dont agree with doing drugs while pregnant. Very selfish move but murder is going way overboard and I bet she will get out of it once the defense brings in doctors that say the toxicity levels were not high enough to kill.

[io856]

fukin coke whore slut at 15yrs of age

wtf is going on there

[Captain Equipoise]

at 36 weeks, that child could survive outside the womb and probably without any help from machines, example.

She is 15, obviously should be held accountable for her actions but I'm not quite sold on murder charges, unless it can be directly linked to the stillborn. Obviously doing bumps while preggo isn't to bright.

Obviously you're a pro, only users know that kind of lingo.

[abijahmaniaco]

Murder, no, but if they can prove beyond doubt that her coke-snorting killed the child, then I've no probs with the little bitch doing some time.

isn't murder and killing the child the same thing though?

[gcb]

Can't be murder unless she had intent, possibly manslaughter and I'm not even sure that is a good idea.

[GroinkTropin]

Mike, so what about women that have a few cigs or a few glasses of wine during pregnancy. We know it's not good for either but MANYYYYY women have had healthy babies while doing so.

So what if (yes not likely) she had a few toots and that was it during the pregnancy. Or a woman that has a glass of wine before she knew that she was pregnant or for arguments sake in the last month. Baby was born still born. What then

Not one of the girls I have been friends with for years had even one drink or one cigarrette while pregnant. Sorry, I do not hang with fucking human scum.

If you are adult enough to say "i want to keep this baby" then you have a responsibility to yourself as well as your unborn child to do EVERYTHING in your power to ensure that childs safety and health while being brought into this shitty world.

The same line of irresponsible thinking you are displaying has led to a society where unwed mothers are popping out kids at 15 out of wedlock and snorting lines of cocaine again, at 15 years old, and not giving a shit.

How the FUCK can you, as a mother, defend this womans actions for even one fucking second? Stop obsessing over whether this is murder or manslaughter, and let's back up to the part where the mother IS FIFTEEN AND PREGNANT, AND WORSE YET SNORTING COCAINE.

The fuck is wrong with this country? You all need your priorities checked. I am sorry liberalism has worn you all down and robbed you of most of your morality, this country might not be worth saving or worrying about after all...

[newmom]

Not one of the girls I have been friends with for years had even one drink or one cigarrette while pregnant. Sorry, I do not hang with fucking human scum.

If you are adult enough to say "i want to keep this baby" then you have a responsibility to yourself as well as your unborn child to do EVERYTHING in your power to ensure that childs safety and health while being brought into this shitty world.

The same line of irresponsible thinking you are displaying has led to a society where unwed mothers are popping out kids at 15 out of wedlock and snorting lines of cocaine again, at 15 years old, and not giving a shit.

How the FUCK can you, as a mother, defend this womans actions for even one fucking second? Stop obsessing over whether this is murder or manslaughter, and let's back up to the part where the mother IS FIFTEEN AND PREGNANT, AND WORSE YET SNORTING COCAINE.

The fuck is wrong with this country? You all need your priorities checked. I am sorry liberalism has worn you all down and robbed you of most of your morality, this country might not be worth saving or worrying about after all...

Where am I condoning or stating people I hang with it do smoke or drink? Teenagers have sex, DO I condone that NO, but it is what it is. Who am I to pass judgement on anyone. I don't nor will.
I honestly, until it correlates to the the stillborn birth. If they can correlate her abuse to the stillborn, then yes that is murder because that fetus can survive outside the womb on its own at 36 weeks

I'd venture to think she had no or very limited prenatel care, THEY would catch that cocaine in a second.

Obviously you're a pro, only users know that kind of lingo.

really, bumps, scoops and lines was quite the lingo or used to be in the nj/nyc area in early 2000's

[The Wizard of Truth]

Well this English celebrity whore called jordan used coke, drank lots during pregnancy and look how her child turned out
Blind, spastic, obese and another thing which I wont mention or il be banned again
If the stupid little bastard wasnt so funny to look at she should be charged with endangering his life during pregnancy

[newmom]

I know a girl I went to hs with. 5 healthy kids and one with down syndrome, she didn't drink or do anything.

I'm not saying women should do these things, OF COURSE they Shouldn't. If you can't stop partying, their are other options.

As soon as I found out I was preggo, stopped smoking that instant. Didn't pick it up till after I was done breastfeeding.

[The Wizard of Truth]

Downs are different, thats an extra chromasome, nothing the mother can do

[Captain Equipoise]

Well this English celebrity whore called jordan used coke, drank lots during pregnancy and look how her child turned out
Blind, spastic, obese and another thing which I wont mention or il be banned again
If the stupid little bastard wasnt so funny to look at she should be charged with endangering his life during pregnancy

Hahaha, classy bitch! the kid looks like beetlejuice's from howard stern

[dr.chimps]

Always liked this one.   

[Largerthanlife]

Religion of Peace....oh wait this is in the USA!

"
Outcry in America as pregnant women who lose babies face murder charges

Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion





Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

Gibbs is the first woman in Mississippi to be charged with murder relating to the loss of her unborn baby. But her case is by no means isolated. Across the US more and more prosecutions are being brought that seek to turn pregnant women into criminals.

"Women are being stripped of their constitutional personhood and subjected to truly cruel laws," said Lynn Paltrow of the campaign National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). "It's turning pregnant women into a different class of person and removing them of their rights."

Bei Bei Shuai, 34, has spent the past three months in a prison cell in Indianapolis charged with murdering her baby. On 23 December she tried to commit suicide by taking rat poison after her boyfriend abandoned her.

Shuai was rushed to hospital and survived, but she was 33 weeks pregnant and her baby, to whom she gave birth a week after the suicide attempt and whom she called Angel, died after four days. In March Shuai was charged with murder and attempted foeticide and she has been in custody since without the offer of bail.

In Alabama at least 40 cases have been brought under the state's "chemical endangerment" law. Introduced in 2006, the statute was designed to protect children whose parents were cooking methamphetamine in the home and thus putting their children at risk from inhaling the fumes.

Amanda Kimbrough is one of the women who have been ensnared as a result of the law being applied in a wholly different way. During her pregnancy her foetus was diagnosed with possible Down's syndrome and doctors suggested she consider a termination, which Kimbrough declined as she is not in favour of abortion.

The baby was delivered by caesarean section prematurely in April 2008 and died 19 minutes after birth.

Six months later Kimbrough was arrested at home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child on the grounds that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy – a claim she has denied.

"That shocked me, it really did," Kimbrough said. "I had lost a child, that was enough."

She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars. "I'm just living one day at a time, looking after my three other kids," she said. "They say I'm a criminal, how do I answer that? I'm a good mother."

Women's rights campaigners see the creeping criminalisation of pregnant women as a new front in the culture wars over abortion, in which conservative prosecutors are chipping away at hard-won freedoms by stretching protection laws to include foetuses, in some cases from the day of conception. In Gibbs' case defence lawyers have argued before Mississippi's highest court that her prosecution makes no sense. Under Mississippi law it is a crime for any person except the mother to try to cause an abortion.

"If it's not a crime for a mother to intentionally end her pregnancy, how can it be a crime for her to do it unintentionally, whether by taking drugs or smoking or whatever it is," Robert McDuff, a civil rights lawyer asked the state supreme court.

McDuff told the Guardian that he hoped the Gibbs prosecution was an isolated example. "I hope it's not a trend that's going to catch on. To charge a woman with murder because of something she did during pregnancy is really unprecedented and quite extreme."

He pointed out that anti-abortion groups were trying to amend the Mississippi constitution by setting up a state referendum, or ballot initiative, that would widen the definition of a person under the state's bill of rights to include a foetus from the day of conception.

Some 70 organisations across America have come together to file testimonies, known as amicus briefs, in support of Gibbs that protest against her treatment on several levels. One says that to treat "as a murderer a girl who has experienced a stillbirth serves only to increase her suffering".

Another, from a group of psychologists, laments the misunderstanding of addiction that lies behind the indictment. Gibbs did not take cocaine because she had a "depraved heart" or to "harm the foetus but to satisfy an acute psychological and physical need for that particular substance", says the brief.

Perhaps the most persuasive argument put forward in the amicus briefs is that if such prosecutions were designed to protect the unborn child, then they would be utterly counter-productive: "Prosecuting women and girls for continuing [a pregnancy] to term despite a drug addiction encourages them to terminate wanted pregnancies to avoid criminal penalties. The state could not have intended this result when it adopted the homicide statute."

Paltrow sees what is happening to Gibbs as a small taste of what would be unleashed were the constitutional right to an abortion ever overturned. "In Mississippi the use of the murder statute is creating a whole new legal standard that makes women accountable for the outcome of their pregnancies and threatens them with life imprisonment for murder."
Miscarriage of justice

At least 38 of the 50 states across America have introduced foetal homicide laws that were intended to protect pregnant women and their unborn children from violent attacks by third parties – usually abusive male partners – but are increasingly being turned by renegade prosecutors against the women themselves.

South Carolina was one of the first states to introduce such a foetal homicide law. National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found only one case of a South Carolina man who assaulted a pregnant woman having been charged under its terms, and his conviction was eventually overturned. Yet the group estimates there have been up to 300 women arrested for their actions during pregnancy.

In other states laws designed to protect children against the damaging effects of drugs have similarly been twisted to punish childbearers."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/24/america-pregnant-women-murder-charges

OMG that is disgusting!  The baby wasn't even real yet, disgusting to charge this living human being with murder, what bullshit, can't believe it, sounds like conservatism at work. 

[newmom]

that was a child IMO. 36 weeks can live outside the womb without any assistance. It will be hard for murder if there is no link between the coke and still birth of child.

Again not condoning what she did, she should pay but on what charges time will tell

[TRIX]

theres 300 million americans

fucking rabbits

[tonymctones]

at the point in which you decide to keep the child, you should do everything in your power to make sure that child is taken care of while you have complete control.

like someone mentioned murder is generally with intent or in the process of committing another crime.

i think if she does get convicted and if there is a connection she sure as shit should as an adult it will be for manslaughter.

[newmom]

at the point in which you decide to keep the child, you should do everything in your power to make sure that child is taken care of while you have complete control.

like someone mentioned murder is generally with intent or in the process of committing another crime.

i think if she does get convicted and if there is a connection she sure as shit should as an adult it will be for manslaughter.

Until you make the decision to keep it or abort it or adoption. Just stay healthy until that decision is made.

Yes, I agree, tried as an adult

[Disgusted]

Until you make the decision to keep it or abort it or adoption. Just stay healthy until that decision is made.

Yes, I agree, tried as an adult

Agreed, this way you can at least have the decency to abort a healthy baby.

[tonymctones]

Agreed, this way you can at least have the decency to abort a healthy baby.

or if you end up keeping it, you havent harmed it...

[newmom]

Agreed, this way you can at least have the decency to abort a healthy baby.

well, I'm pro choice so if my posts offend anyone, well I won't apologize.

[Disgusted]

Next thing you know congress will pass a law that your baby will need to be tested to see if it's healthy enuff to be aborted.