In December 2015, a 31-year-old Tennessee woman, Anna Yocca, was charged with attempted first-degree murder for allegedly trying to use a coat hanger to end her pregnancy.
On Tuesday, more than a year later, she was released from the Rutherford County jail on time served. Yocca pled guilty to “attempted procurement of a miscarriage” — an obscure Class E felony that was added to Tennessee’s criminal code in the late 1800s, and is still on the books today.
“Today, after more than a year in jail, in order to win immediate release Ms. Yocca pleaded guilty to attempted procurement of a miscarriage despite the fact that it is unconstitutional and a violation of international human rights principles to use this vague statute to punish women and new mothers for their pregnancies and the outcomes of those pregnancies,” Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), said in a statement Tuesday.
Yocca was arrested in Tennessee in September after she showed up bleeding at a hospital, fearing for her health and safety. She gave birth to a very premature baby boy, who was just 24 weeks along and weighed one and a half pounds.
Yocca’s defense attorney, Gerald Melton, managed to get the first-degree murder charge dismissed in February 2016. Then, however, Yocca was re-indicted for aggravated fetal assault, under a 2014 law that penalized women who abused opioids with jail if they gave birth to babies with neonatal abstinence syndrome. This was done despite there being no evidence that Yocca had abused opioids.
That 2014 law, however, was extremely problematic even when it was used as intended — it didn’t address any of the health issues surrounding pregnant women and opioid abuse, and it actually threatened to make those issues worse if women refused to seek treatment for fear of jail sentence. The law was written to expire automatically in July 2016 unless it was renewed, and it was not renewed.
But prosecutors weren’t done with Yocca after that 2014 law went away. They charged her with three new felonies: aggravated assault with a weapon, attempted criminal abortion, and attempted procurement of a miscarriage. The latter two laws were first enacted in the late 1800s.
Yocca’s case was tragic. The baby, who was later adopted, has severe health problems, as most infants born that early do, and will likely require oxygen for the rest of his life. And whatever drove Yocca to try to end her pregnancy herself, it probably involved serious desperation if she was willing to take her chances by sticking a sharp metal object into her cervix.
But this story is about a lot more than one woman and one child. It even goes beyond America’s dwindling access to safe, legal abortion. This story has horrifying implications for all pregnant women, even those who don’t want an abortion. It shows how any woman can be treated like a criminal if law enforcement decides to take an interest in her pregnancy.
The coat hanger is just the beginning
To be sure, it’s shocking to see a new case of a “coat hanger abortion” — the symbol of pre–Roe v. Wade America, when women died or were maimed by the thousands every year because they were that desperate to end their unwanted pregnancies. “I never thought I would hear of a coat hanger abortion in my medical life,” wrote OB-GYN Jen Gunter.
Pro-choice advocates fear that more women will try to self-induce abortions at home, since a skyrocketing number of state-level abortion restrictions have made the procedure much harder to access in the past five years.
Tennessee, where Yocca lives, is no exception. Women now have to make two trips to the doctor, spaced 48 hours apart. They may have to pay about $500 to $1,500 out of pocket depending on how far along they are, since Tennessee is one of the many states that have outlawed abortion coverage in their Affordable Care Act health plans.
FULL ARTICLE: https://www.vox.com/2015/12/23/10656860/coat-hanger-abortion-pregnancy-murder