(Miami) A court in Florida has rejected the request of a pregnant woman charged with murder and imprisoned, who asked to be released on the grounds that her fetus would be a person and would have the right to freedom.
By refraining from ruling on the merits of the case, this Court of Appeal explained its decision, dated February 24, by the fact that “the application was filed without providing any factual elements”.
“We do not believe that we can properly determine whether the unborn child has the right to file an appeal before us given the incomplete file in this case,” she added.
In July 2022, Natalia Harrell, 24 and some six weeks pregnant at the time according to her court petition, was arrested and charged with murder after fatally shooting a woman while they were both in an Uber vehicle.
“The unborn child has not been charged with any crime by the prosecutor” and is “illegally incarcerated”, argued the document, according to which Natalia Harrell did not receive the treatment necessary for her condition. pregnant woman in jail.
“The child had no say when the decision to incarcerate the mother was taken,” William Norris, hired by the future father and presenting himself as the lawyer for the “child, told AFP. to be born “.
Mr. Norris asked for his release in the name of the habeas corpus procedure, which makes it possible to challenge a detention seen as arbitrary.
In a separate argument, an appeals court judge, Monica Gordo, sharply criticized the “illogical” argument presented by the motion.
“The government could no more be accused of unlawfully detaining the unborn child in this case than the mother could be guilty of kidnapping. […] if she chose to visit her grandmother in Georgia while being eight months pregnant,” she wrote.
“The mother presents herself to us as a poorly disguised Trojan horse,” she added.
This case is reminiscent of that of a pregnant motorist, fined by the Texas police because she was driving in a lane reserved for carpooling, and who estimated last year that her fetus counted as a passenger. She had taken the matter to court.
Cases that come after the Supreme Court of the United States dynamited, in June 2022, the judgment Roe v. Wade which guaranteed the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy at the federal level, leaving this decision in the hands of each state.