Like Purvi Patel, the Indiana woman recently sentenced to 20 years on charges of feticide and child neglect, I once suffered the loss of a pregnancy. Like Patel, I hid my pregnancy, although when I felt the first waves of cramps and my uterus turned inside out, I began to weep for the loss of a child I didn’t even know I wanted. I remember pain, fear, confusion — and the utter loneliness of a blood-clotted white porcelain toilet bowl in a strange hotel in a foreign country. No one was with me. I cleaned up the mess and, as the blood continued to flow, tried to sleep. Ten years later I gave birth to a son in my home in Venice Beach, California. The labor was quick but painful, because my son was in a difficult birthing position. I had the support of a doula, a midwife, an assistant and my husband — but my son’s birth was still terrifying. Somewhere between my two experiences lies Patel’s story: not just a miscarriage, but a birth navigated alone, without support. Patel delivered a stillborn baby prematurely at home in secret, with no one in attendance. She would not have known what to do even if her child had been born alive; when to cut the cord or how to clear the baby’s airways had there been an obstruction. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. As others have demonstrated, it’s likely that her 23- or 24-week-old fetus would not have had sufficiently developed lungs to breathe without a neonatal unit immediately on hand. The legal details of Patel’s conviction — the antiquated and scientifically unproven evidence used to convict her, the bias of key medical witnesses who were produced as so-called experts but testified outside of their field, the contradictory nature of the feticide charge (which suggests the child must have died in utero) and the child neglect charge (which suggests the child was born alive and died because of her actions) — have already been eloquently and thoroughly examined in the press. What I’d like to address is the troubling implications of Patel’s conviction: It essentially equates the traumatic miscarriage of an unwanted child with murder, thus providing us with yet another terrifying piece of evidence in support of the conclusion of an earlier piece I wrote on the criminalization of America’s mothers. One doesn’t need to be a medical expert to deduce that Patel’s actions — hiding a pregnancy, giving birth alone, concealing the dead fetus in a dumpster and then going to the emergency room in a state of severe physical distress — constitute a physically, mentally and emotionally painful experience. She needs psychotherapy and treatment, not because she is exceptionally disturbed, but because no one could have endured this experience without suffering trauma. The lack of compassion for a confused and suffering new mother who has endured horrific loss is what has drawn the international press to this story, disgusted by the inhumanity of America’s anti-abortion laws. Patel was convicted for attempting to protect her own privacy clumsily and inadequately. She was convicted for not knowing her rights. She was convicted for failing to seek medical care for a pregnancy she did not know whether she wanted. She was convicted for expressing doubts about her desire or ability to birth and raise a child outside of marriage. She was convicted for not knowing that she could have a legal abortion and for contemplating an illegal one. She was convicted for living in a country that makes access to legal abortion nearly impossible in certain areas. Patel is not being convicted for killing — or intending to kill — a baby. She is being convicted for being his mother.

A nightmarish scenario

When I was pregnant, I ate sushi and salami and occasionally had a sip of beer. If my son had died in utero or been stillborn, would I have been convicted too?

Men are legislators who can dictate how women must behave during pregnancy. Meanwhile, women are being convicted, in America, for being mothers.