A pregnant woman charged with murder and incarcerated in Florida is asking to be released on the grounds that her fetus is a person, that he is not charged with anything and therefore has the right to freedom, said Thursday (February 23rd). the advocate for the “unborn child”. “The child had no say when the decision to incarcerate the mother was made,” William Norris told Agence France-Presse.
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 together. in an Uber vehicle. Natalia Harrell had a gun in her purse and “feared for her life and the life of her unborn child,” according to the statement filed last week.
“The unborn child has not been charged with any crime by the prosecutor” and is “unlawfully incarcerated”, argues the document, which claims that Natalia Harrell did not receive the care necessary for her status as a woman pregnant in prison. The lawyer therefore requests his release in the name of the habeas corpus procedure, which makes it possible to challenge a detention seen as arbitrary.
“It’s interesting to see how the company is progressing,” said William Norris, who was hired by the future father. “People are starting to recognize that an unborn child is a person. The case is reminiscent of a pregnant motorist, fined by Texas police for driving in a carpool lane, who last year deemed 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 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. If it is not a direct result of this decision, the request of Natalia Harrell, pregnant about eight months today, is “a consequence”, admitted William Norris.