Indiana Woman Freed From Jail After Being Sentenced To 20 Years For Self-Induced Abortion

An Indiana woman whose feticide conviction for a self-induced abortion was overturned has been released from prison after a judge said she should be freed immediately.

Indiana Department of Correction spokesman Doug Garrison says 35-year-old Purvi Patel was with relatives when she left the Indiana Women's Prison in Indianapolis Thursday morning.

Patel's attorney, Lawrence Marshall, says she wants her privacy and is focusing on 'putting her life back together'.
On Wednesday, a judge resentenced Patel to 18 months on a neglect of a dependent charge but said she should be released because she has already served longer than 18 months in prison.

Wednesday's ruling comes less than two months after the Indiana Court of Appeals overturned Patel's 2015 conviction — and 20 year prison sentence — on a charge of killing her premature infant by taking abortion-inducing drugs, saying that the state's law was not intended to be used 'to prosecute women for their own abortions'.

The state's attorney general decided not to appeal the ruling and let pass the deadline by which he had to ask the Indiana Supreme Court to take up the case.

Patel was 32 when she was arrested in July 2013.

She had sought treatment at a hospital for profuse bleeding after delivering a 1 ½-pound boy.

According to court records, Patel bought the abortion-inducing drugs online, took the drugs and then delivered the premature baby that died in the home she shared with her parents and grandparents in the community of Granger, northeast of South Bend.