When Is Suicide Not Suicide? When You’re Pregnant. Bei Bei Shuai ingested rat poisoning in a suicide attempt when 33 weeks pregnant.

by Robin Marty
December 13, 2011

Today, the Indiana Court of Appeals heard testimony on the case of Bei Bei Shuai, the pregnant woman who ingested rat poison in a suicide attempt, causing her to go into preterm labor at 33 weeks to a baby girl that died soon after.

Shuai, who survived her attempted suicide only to be arrested and held without bail since this March, has become the poster child for the question as to whether the rights of a fetus actually outweigh the rights of the woman who carries it. Ironically, she has now been imprisoned for nine months — longer than she ever carried the baby girl that she is accused of murdering.

Numerous groups have filed friend of the court briefings, asking for the state to release Shuai because you cannot be prosecuted for a suicide attempt. But the state has been determined to see the case not as a suicide attempt, but as an act of murder of a viable fetus, and is punishing her to the fullest extent that they can.

According to the Greenfield Reporter, “Attorney Linda Pence argues that Indiana’s law was written to protect fetuses from violence from third parties, not from their own mothers. She says suicide isn’t a crime and Shuai couldn’t have expected to be arrested.” Prosecution, meanwhile, is countering by proclaiming that Shuai “knowingly killed a viable fetus.”

In short, had Shuai been successful in her suicide attempt, she would not be punished. Had she failed in her suicide attempt but the preterm infant survived, she would not be punished. Had she failed in her suicide and not been pregnant, again, she would not be punished. Had she failed in her suicide attempt and not been so advanced in her pregnancy, once again, she would not be punished.

If not for a matter of a few weeks in either direction, Shuai would be offered help. Instead, she is being held in prison indefinitely and without bail. In fact, when asked about dropping charges, the state Attorney General refused. “This case generates strong opinions but the state’s position adheres to the longstanding principle that a jury must weigh any facts, even those that go to the defendant’s intent, and therefore the trial court is where this case belongs. The defense can argue its interpretation of the facts to the jury but the county prosecutor need not accept at face value the defense’s assertions.”

In other words, the state of Indiana thinks that the inadvertent death of a 33 week preterm baby matters far more than the mental health of the woman who was carrying her, and demands that she be judged by a jury, held indefinitely, and used as a cautionary tale rather than be given any sort of treatment or counseling.

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Court hears mom's appeal in baby death
Updated: Tuesday, 13 Dec 2011, 6:52 PM EST
Published : Tuesday, 13 Dec 2011, 6:52 PM EST
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CHARLES WILSON,Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) - Since suicide isn't a crime, there's no way a Chinese immigrant could have known she would be charged with murder and feticide for trying to kill herself while she was pregnant, her attorney told the Indiana Court of Appeals on Tuesday.

Bei Bei Shuai, 34, was 33 weeks pregnant when she ate rat poison Dec. 23 after her boyfriend broke up with her. Attorneys say she was attempting suicide in the midst of major depression. Shuai was hospitalized, and doctors tried to treat her for the poison. Court records show doctors told Shuai they detected little problem with the fetus until days later, when the premature baby girl was delivered by cesarean section on Dec. 31.

The child, named Angel Shuai, died three days later from bleeding in the brain after she was removed from life support. Shuai was charged in March.

Her attorney, Linda Pence, who had filed a pre-trial appeal, asked the three-judge panel to order the charges dismissed or at least allow Shuai to be released on bail.

"While it was a tragic decision, it was not unlawful," Pence said. She argued that Indiana's feticide and murder laws were written or amended to protect fetuses from violence from third parties, not from their own mothers. She said suicide isn't a crime and Shuai couldn't have expected to be arrested for attempting to kill herself.

"No pregnant woman has been put on notice that if they are depressed and try to do harm to themselves that they would be charged with feticide," Pence said.

Judge Edward Najam said that raised the argument that Shuai's due process rights had been violated. But he said the court would try first to decide the case on statutory, not constitutional, issues.

"At the heart of your case is due process," Najam said. "Your argument is that she only found out it was a crime after the fact."

Deputy attorney general Ellen Meilaender said that the case wasn't about suicide. She told the court that Shuai was charged because she "took another viable life."

"The crime is harming someone else in the context of your suicide," Meilaender told the panel, which included one man and two women.

The state has contended for months that Shuai intended to kill her unborn baby, not just herself.

Meilaender refused to concede that the statute might be vague. "It's very clear that just because you're trying to commit suicide at the time you take another life that that doesn't excuse you of liability," she said.

Pence argued that similar cases in other states had been decided in favor of the mothers. "Other states' courts seem to come to the conclusion that this is wrong and they get rid of it however they can," she said. "They realize this is a bad, bad action to charge and it doesn't belong in the criminal system." She questioned how murder and feticide laws could apply to pregnant women without also applying to legal abortion.

The judges also questioned both attorneys on how the law could apply since the infant was a fetus when Shuai allegedly ate poison, but didn't die until after she had been delivered. But Meilaender said the fact that the child was born alive didn't lessen the crime, and evidence showed without medical intervention the fetus would have died.

Najam said the judges would decide the case as soon as possible. He warned both sides not to interpret the judges' questions as a sign of which way they were leaning. "We don't know what we're going to decide," he said.

Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said in a statement issued after the hearing that the charges should remain intact so Shuai's trial could proceed.

"This case generates strong opinions but the state's position adheres to the longstanding principle that a jury must weigh any facts, even those that go to the defendant's intent, and therefore the trial court is where this case belongs," he said in the statement. "The defense can argue its interpretation of the facts to the jury but the county prosecutor need not accept at face value the defense's assertions."

Groups including the American Medical Women's Association, National Advocates for Pregnant Women and the American Civil Liberties Union have filed legal briefs on Shuai's behalf.

Pence said afterward that she thought the hearing had gone well and the judges had asked pointed questions. "The judges had clearly read, really reviewed the briefs," she said.

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My opinion: She knew that if she took her life, she would also take the life of her unborn child. Period.

Since suicide isn't a crime, there's no way a Chinese immigrant could have known she would be charged with murder and feticide for trying to kill herself while she was pregnant, her attorney told the Indiana Court of Appeals on Tuesday.

It should be a crime if the Woman kills an unborn baby.

lindamarie wrote:

Since suicide isn't a crime, there's no way a Chinese immigrant could have known she would be charged with murder and feticide for trying to kill herself while she was pregnant, her attorney told the Indiana Court of Appeals on Tuesday.

It should be a crime if the Woman kills an unborn baby.

I am pretty cut and dry about that!

lindamarie wrote:

Since suicide isn't a crime, there's no way a Chinese immigrant could have known she would be charged with murder and feticide for trying to kill herself while she was pregnant, her attorney told the Indiana Court of Appeals on Tuesday.

It should be a crime if the Woman kills an unborn baby.

ignorance of the law is no excuse if there was a law on the books. I'm sure she knew not to drink alcohol for it would/could harm the baby, she probably knew not to smoke cigarettes or take ANY drugs for it would/could harm the baby. Any idiot knows that if one eats rat poison it would most likely do harm!
Guilty!

by Soraya Chemaly
May 16, 2012 - 7:26pm

Prosecuting women based on the outcomes of their pregnancies violates their constitutional rights and is cruel and unusual punishment. And yet, this is what is happening.

Last week, the Indiana Supreme Court declined to drop feticide and murder charges against a woman named Bei Bei Shuai, who has been in jail for 14 months and faces 45 years in prison because, after attempting suicide while pregnant, her fetus died. Her situation is tragic and she needs public support. But, it is also a very dangerous precedent, ensuring as it does that girls and women will lose their rights and can be put in jail for miscarriage, drug addiction, accidents, attempted suicides, and for “chemically endangering” their fetuses from the moment of conception. Another woman, Christine Taylor was arrested and imprisoned essentially for falling down.

Of particular note is that in denying Bei Bei Shuai reprieve from charges, the Indiana Supreme Court upheld a mid-level appellate court ruling that said that laws established to penalize people who hurt pregnant women can actually be used against pregnant women themselves. Hundreds of women around the country* are currently imprisoned under the aegis of "best intentions" laws. What this means is that feticide and fetal murder laws can now be used to charge, imprison and penalize pregnant women at the discretion of legislators and law enforcement officials.

“It means that women can be charged and imprisoned if they engage in any intentional act that law enforcement believes will threaten the life or health of the fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses they carry,” explains Emma Kettering of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

So, since this is happening, it is only fair to say that once a woman get's pregnant she is a crime scene in waiting. In Arizona, she doesn't even have to be pregnant. How much jail time should she consider when she is expecting?

In the case of Bei Bei Shuai, up to 45 years. What was clearly a sad and gruesome suicide attempt (she took rat poison) resulting from depression and desperate personal circumstances is being turned into murder.

In this environment, and with no confidence that their rights will be respected and protected, pregnant women will continue to be jailed, in ever increasing numbers, in unexpected ways that violate their rights. Fear of imprisonment will result in women compromising their health and the health of their fetuses by avoiding pre-natal care, treatment for addiction and medical help if they fear they are miscarrying. They will have more abortions to avoid penalization.

The creeping expansion of these laws needs to be broadly objected to as a matter of citizenship, rights, law, logic, science and public health. This is particularly true in the case of insidious chemical endangerment laws, which demonstrate as Bei Bei Shua’s case does, the danger of turning health issues into criminal issues.

Chemical endangerment laws in particular ignore actual scientific research regarding fetal development, relying instead on faux moralities, irrational mythologies and deliberate misunderstandings. But, once the laws are established they can be mis-used. And, whereas “chemical endangerment” starts off with illegal substances, like cocaine and meth, among women who need drug treatment programs, not vilification, it is applicable to any chemical threat to a fetus in any woman’s womb. Severe alcohol abuse, although entire legal, can be far more dangerous than illegal drugs, what do we do about that? What about pesticides in your garden? How about BPAs in...everything? What about if a woman works somewhere where she is exposed to toxic substances, say she's a nurse in a hospital? What if she takes medication to regulate an illness? What if she needs chemotherapy? These are all chemically endangering. How long should a woman go to jail? Twelve months for cigarettes? Six for anti-depressants? She has to take them, because if she is depressed enough to attempt suicide and her fetus is lost, she – like Bei Bei Shuai - will go to jail for much longer.

What has come to pass is exactly what anti-abortion activists always denied would happen: namely, that women would lose their rights and be criminalized through pregnancy (*see below). Their strategy has always focused on eliminating abortion and prosecuting abortion providers. But, that strategy is increasingly obsolete. Changing medical technology and options that allow women to bypass doctors in terminating unwanted pregnancies clearly mean that doctors cannot be the target of prosecution and women have to be.

“You pass laws first that say only physicians can perform abortions. Then you pass laws that make it impossible for those physicians to provide abortions. And then women take the steps they need to take as they do all around the world, as they did before Roe," explains Lynn Paltrow, founder of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, one Bei Bei Shua's legal representatives. "And you create a perfect setup for making literally millions of women subject to arrest for having illegal self abortions.”

This is the only way to achieve their goal - stripping women of their right and ability to control their own reproduction safely and legally. That's what happens when wombs are public property and pregnancy loss is considered murder.

Using laws like the ones used against Bei Bei Shuai and creating fetal pain and chemical endangerment laws ensure that women are penalized for exercising their rights, claiming bodily integrity and assuming they have equal protection under the law. They are criminalized. And criminals are punished when they break laws. What the “pro-family,” “pro-life” movement has successfully done is create dangerous precedents and legal frameworks that penalize women who violate state defined breeding rules.

In pursuing anti-choice, fetal protection policies that erroneously pit a woman’s rights against those of her fetus equally from the moment of conception the “pro-life” movement targets unsympathetic women and manipulates public opinion about what makes women “good mothers.” Women who break laws, use drugs, seem careless and unethical are “bad mothers.” They do this strategically and effectively play on the complexity and nuance implicit in research regarding fetal development, societal ideals that glorify motherhood and public opinion. Women like Bei Bei Shua and others are paying the price for their achieving their goal of voiding Roe v. Wade. Persecuting women by any means necessary is just one component of dismantling women's rights and eliminating abortion.

Consider Mississippi which while it has not technically outlawed abortion, in practice it has, especially for women who cannot afford to leave the state to end their pregnancies.

Murder in Mississippi includes the unborn. A prosecutor in Mississippi is already trying to use the state's murder law to punish Rennie Gibbs, a teenager who suffered a stillbirth and faces life imprisonment. She was a cocaine user, but there is no evidence of a correlation between her drug use and the stillbirth.

There is one, at-risk, remaining abortion clinic staffed by people who drive from Alabama.

Women in Mississippi are prohibited by law upon threat of penalty from performing their own abortions, even with perfectly legal drugs. A doctor has to be involved.

Doctors in Mississippi who want to perform abortions must have admitting privileges in a local hospital, which legislators – dismissing the coat-hanger concerns of “some African Americans” – boast is near impossible.

Women in Mississippi who cannot travel because they do not have the financial wherewithal or they have children or parents that they care for, will do what women have always done and find dangerous, not medically sound ways to terminate unwanted pregnancies. This is, of course, illegal.

“But, hey…” if women die using hangers and "home remedies" and go to jail for doing it or miscarry trying, so be it. Mississippi is proud to be the first state to enact compulsory pregnancy for women.

Is this really what American’s want? There is no other conclusion. Pregnant women will all be potential criminals, their bodies considered potential crime scenes. They will deny themselves health care, endanger their lives, harm their bodies, have high-risk pregnancies. Many, many will go to jail.

People need compassion, they need to be better education about how to avoid unwanted pregnancies, they need medical attention, pre-natal care and drug treatment if suffering from addiction. They need access to safe abortion care. They need their rights to be respected and protected. They do not need to go to jail.

Forty-seven medical and legal advocacy groups have filed amicus briefs describing their objections to this “disturbing trend.” This isn’t a trend. A trend is something organic and possibly unexpected. This is a planned strategic assault on women and their rights.

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I posted this article as I was intrigued by what the author had to say. HOWEVER, I disagree with her. There is a Huge difference between a pregnant woman who ingests rat poison and a pregnant woman who is on anti-depressant's. The latter is seeing a doctor and would be told if the particular anti-depressant could be harmful to the fetus. This author, IMHO, tried to compare using a hanger to end a pregnancy (OMG!) with a woman who either is on an anti-depressant or smoked cigs. I Don't condone smoking while pregnant but we ALL know our mother's did (or most of them if you're over 55 now) and Yes, it CAN be harmful but to compare it w/ingesting rat poison or using a hanger is beyond ridiculous!! This is MOO!

11:28 PM, May. 22, 2012
Written by
Associated Press

A Chinese immigrant who tried to kill herself by eating rat poison was free on bond Tuesday after more than a year in an Indianapolis jail on charges that she killed her 33-week-old fetus.

Bei Bei Shuai lugged a plastic bag full of her belongings and leaned on her attorney as she walked up a ramp toward reporters and friends waiting on the sidewalk outside the jail.

"I feel very happy," the 35-year-old Shanghai native said moments before she broke into tears and hugged her friends.

Defense attorney Linda Pence said one of Shuai's first moves would be to call her mother in China. Work on preparing for Shuai's Dec. 3 trial, she said, could wait a day.

"Today is a day of celebration," Pence said.

Shuai was 33 weeks pregnant when she ate rat poison on Dec. 23, 2010, after her boyfriend broke up with her. Shuai was hospitalized and doctors detected little wrong with the fetus' health for the first few days. The premature girl, Angel Shuai, was delivered by cesarean section Dec. 31, but she died from bleeding in the brain three days later after being removed from life support.

Prosecutors charged Shuai with murder in March 2011, arguing that a suicide note she wrote showed she intended to kill her baby as well as herself.

Shuai's attorneys sought to have the charges against her dismissed or have her released on bond, but Marion Superior Court Judge Sheila Carlisle rejected those motions. The Indiana Court of Appeals declined to order the charges dropped but did order Carlisle to set bail for Shuai, saying the defense had enough evidence to rebut the charges against her and that the case against her wasn't strong enough to keep her in jail.

Carlisle set a $50,000 bond for Shuai on Friday and ordered her to surrender her passport and submit to GPS tracking after her release. She also was told not to leave the state without the court's permission.

Shuai's friends told Carlisle that Shuai could live with them and work in their restaurant until her trial.

Defense attorneys said the law under which Shuai was charged was intended to be used to protect pregnant women, not to be used against them. They argued that prosecuting a woman based on the outcome of her pregnancy violates her constitutional rights to due process, equal treatment and privacy.

Several medical and women's rights groups filed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting Shuai, some saying that a conviction in this case could set a precedent by which pregnant women can be prosecuted for smoking or other behavior deemed a danger to the fetus.

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