MONDAY, MARCH 30 This week of unhinged bigots and revenge-porn vengeance kicked off in Indiana, the northeasterly Midwestern American state that provided us with an array of insane doings on which to focus. Let’s start with the truly unexpected: the saga of Purvi Patel, the 33-year-old woman in Mishawaka, Indiana, who today became the first woman in the United States to be charged, convicted, and sentenced on a charge of feticide (aka an act that causes the death of a fetus). Details come from NBC News, which reported the saga was set in motion back in July 2013, when Patel walked into an emergency room with heavy bleeding. “Despite initially denying the pregnancy, Patel eventually admitted to medical authorities that she had a miscarriage and threw the stillborn fetus in a dumpster,” reported NBC. “Despite Patel’s claim that she gave birth to a stillborn child, prosecutors argued that Patel gave birth to a live fetus and charged her with child neglect.” Thus came the trial, where jurors learned of Patel’s conservative Hindu upbringing and the fact that her pregnancy was the result of an affair with a coworker, and prosecutors alleged that Patel’s 25-weeks-along fetus died within seconds of being born. “Prosecutors also claimed that Patel ordered abortion-inducing drugs online and tried to terminate her pregnancy, but a toxicology report failed to find evidence of any drugs in her system,” reported NBC…
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