UPDATE: Prosecutors said today they have dropped the murder charge against Kenlissia Jones.
In Albany, a 23-year-old woman is charged with malice murder and possession of a dangerous drug after a social worker said she took multiple pills to terminate her pregnancy.
Kenlissia Jones told a hospital social worker she took four pills she purchased on the internet after her boyfriend broke up with her. She had the baby in the car as she was driving to the hospital. The baby did not survive.
Credit: George Mathis
Credit: George Mathis
Jones is thought to have been more than 5 months into her pregnancy .
The social worker called police.
As wrong as this behavior sounds, prosecutors will have a difficult time convicting Jones of murder. Experts say Georgia law explicitly prohibits prosecuting women for feticide involving their own pregnancies.
"I'm thinking that perhaps whoever made the arrest may not have known what the laws really are," said Genevieve Wilson, a director of the anti-abortion group Georgia Right to Life.
A Georgia appeals court ruled in 1998 that a teenager whose fetus was stillborn after she shot herself in the abdomen could not be prosecuted for performing an illegal abortion.
Jones' grandmother says counseling is needed, not prison -- but it's possible to get both.
What do you think?
More news I found interesting today:
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- Apple, Google, other tech giants warn Obama to 'stay out of people's smartphones'
- Clearing browser history can be deemed 'obstruction of justice' in U.S.
- Radical 1960's counterculture 'hero' was an FBI informant
- Court says people can feed parking meters for strangers, be rude to police
- U.N. 'peacekeepers' made Haitian women exchange sex for food, water
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