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GEORGIA (USA): MURDER CHARGE DROPPED AGAINST WOMAN WHO TOOK ABORTION PILL
June 10, 2015: According to Dougherty County District Attorney Greg Edwards, the murder charges against Jones were dropped on Wednesday. "I dismissed that malice murder warrant after thorough legal research by myself and my staff led to the conclusion that Georgia law presently does not permit prosecution of Ms. Jones for any alleged acts relating to the end of her pregnancy,” Edwards said. Jones still faces a misdemeanor charge of possession of a dangerous drug. Edwards was sworn in on January 2, 2009.
He is the first African-American to serve as the District Attorney for Albany.
On Saturday night, a neighbor drove Kenlissia Jones to the hospital, but she delivered the baby boy in the car on the way. The child died after about half an hour at the hospital. She was arrested after a hospital social worker told officers she had purchased abortion-inducing pills online. It happened on Mobile Avenue, shortly after 8 p.m. Saturday.
She was taken to the Dougherty County Jail, where she was held without bond. According to a report, on June 6, Kenlissia Jones, 23, took Misoprostol she'd ordered online to end her five-and-a-half-month pregnancy, and then drove herself to the hospital.
She delivered the fetus, which did not survive, en route. After revealing she'd taken the pills, she was arrested. According to a report, she purchased the drug, called Cytotec, from a source in Canada. The report says Jones ordered the prescription drug Cytotec from a Canadian company online. In 2012, the state of Georgia outlawed abortions after 20 weeks; Jones took the medication at 22 weeks, according to The Washington Times. This does not mark the first time a woman was charged with murder for ending a pregnancy.
In 2012, a single Idaho mother of three, Jennie Linn McCormack, took Mifeprex (RU-486 ) she ordered online to induce an abortion. Npr.org pointed out that surgical abortions in Idaho start at $500, and state protocol requires multiple trips to the clinic — the closest of which to McCormack was hours away.
Earlier this year, officials slapped a Pennsylvania mother with felony charges and misdemeanor counts for ordering pills online to induce her teenage daughter’s abortion in 2012. An Indiana court convicted Purvi Patel of feticide and felony child neglect in February when she took pills from Hong Kong to miscarry her fetus. (Sources: refinery29.com, Washington Post, WALB, Hands off Cain, 10/06/2015)
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