A Tennessee woman accused of trying to end her pregnancy with a coat hanger has pleaded guilty to a felony and was released after more than a year in jail.
Anna Yocca, 32, pleaded guilty this week to attempted procurement of a miscarriage, according to Rutherford County Criminal Court documents. Her baby survived and state officials said the child is OK.
The case was unsettling for abortion rights advocates, who fear that President-elect Donald Trump might try to follow through on campaign rhetoric about penalizing pregnant women who have abortions. Trump also said he would appoint an anti-abortion Supreme Court justice who could be open to weakening or reversing the landmark abortion case, Roe v. Wade.
Yocca, a Murfreesboro woman, was sentenced to one year with credit for time served, court documents state. She had been incarcerated since December 2015, and jail officials said she has been released.
Police said Yocca filled a bathtub with water in September 2015 and attempted an abortion with a coat hanger. After she began bleeding, her boyfriend took her to a hospital and doctors delivered a 24-week-old, 1.5-pound baby.
At the time, doctors said the child would need medical support the rest of his life because of his injuries.
The baby was put into state custody shortly after his birth. He is no longer in custody of the state Department of Children’s Services, but the child is safe, said agency spokesman Rob Johnson.
Tennessee has several stringent abortion restrictions, including a 2015 law requiring women seeking abortions to receive mandatory counseling and wait 48 hours before they can get the abortion. That law faces a court challenge.
There are seven abortion providers in Tennessee, said Planned Parenthood of Middle & East Tennessee Executive Director Jeff Teague.
Prosecutors dropped an initial attempted murder charge and filed other charges.
The public defender’s office did not comment and prosecutors didn’t immediately return a phone message.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
How cruel can a person be? Thanks to this woman’s selfish actions a child is likely to live the rest of his life partially disabled.
I find it hard to believe a woman of Yocca’s age doesn’t know how babies are created. If she did not want a baby she or her boyfriend should have purchased birth control pills or devices. She should have continued the pregnancy and put the child up for adoption. The abortion industry has made slaughtering babies so routine that people now have no problem killing baby humans.
Man’s sorry for the little babies….
This person is crazy and disgusting how she could do that unborn child and life leaves him in the suffering???
My attitude would be to very strict penalties for me it is a criminal person…
What???? It is perfectly O.K. to kill a baby if you have an M.D. after your name but if anyone else does it, it is a felony!!!! Please!!! Either abortion is right or it is wrong. Abortion in a clinic kills the fetus just as dead as someone shooting the mother and killing the baby. Either way, the baby dies. Why is it murder one way and not the other? Why is an attempted abortion by the mother a felony and not for the abortion provider? If the mother had been an M.D., would it have been O.K.? Murder in all cases is wrong, and should be punished for what it is: the wrongful taking of a life without provocation or injury to the murderer, especially in the case of that life being created as a consequence of decisions made by the, in this case, attempted murderer.
Good question and I understand your comments and logic.
True, True, True. Jail those butchers who get rich murdering babies. They can legally force delivery to pause when the head appears, sever the spinal cord, then remove the body. They must one day stand before the Most Highest’s court which says: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’
If I kill a pregnant lady I will be accused of 2 murders, but if I take her to an abortion clinic and they just murder the baby its ok, no trial, no conviction,……. DONE MAKE NO SENSE!!!!!