The case of Marshae Jones, the pregnant woman charged with manslaughter for the shooting death of her own fetus, has sparked national outcry
, have filed a motion in Alabama’s Jefferson County Circuit Court to have all charges against Jones dismissed.“Using a flawed and twisted rationale, the State of Alabama has charged a new theory of criminal liability that does not lawfully exist,” Jones’ counsel wrote in the motion.
Jones, 27, was five months pregnant when she got in a fight with a woman named Ebony Jamison, 23, outside of a Dollar General store in Pleasant Grove, a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. Jamison shot Jones in the stomach, killing her fetus. “While everyday Ms. Jones relives the most tragic event in her life, the loss of her baby, Marlaysia Jones, she is now being forced by the State to fight an unprecedented attack that threatens to leave her six-year-old daughter without her mother,” the motion says.Although the shooting sent Jones to the hospital, authorities alleged that she was the aggressor in the fight, which led to a grand jury indicting her on one count of manslaughter.
Jones was charged with manslaughter under the state’s fetal homicide laws, which defines a “person” as “a human being, including an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability.” At leastSuch laws have been roundly criticized by reproductive rights advocates, who argue that they allow for the state to criminalize pregnant women and open the door to afford fetuses mote rights than pregnant women.
“It’s never been about saving pregnant women or saving pregnant people or the dignity of pregnancy or any of this other nonsense they say, or justice for murdered pregnant women,” Laurie Bertram Roberts, executive director of the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund,
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