Alone in Alabama: dispatches from an inmate jailed for her son’s stillbirth, On 29 April endure year Amanda Kimbrough sat down in her corpuscle central the awfully boxy Tutwiler women’s bastille in Wetumpka, Alabama and began autograph a letter in which she declared her animosity of accident and remorse. It was a agitating moment, as six years beforehand to the day her alone son Timmy had been built-in anon and had died from complications at bearing afterwards alone 19 minutes.
“Tim Jr would be six years old [today],” she wrote, “and not a day goes by I don’t anticipate of him. While I was out we accumulate his grave busy and kept up, my bedmate and ancestors do while I’m here.”
That Kimbrough – Alabama blackmailer 287089, as the accompaniment branded her – should be cerebration of her son on the ceremony of his afterlife needs no explanation. But the desolation of the letter is acute by the ability that it was because of Timmy’s stillbirth at 25 weeks that she was bound up in the aboriginal place.
Kimbrough was prosecuted for the “chemical endangerment” of her fetus apropos to her on-off attempt with biologic addiction. The case was pursued so angrily by the accompaniment of Alabama that she was answerable with a chic A abomination – agnate to annihilation – and taken all the way to trial, in what is anticipation to be the alone abounding balloon audition of its array in the country.Later, the abstruse acknowledged issues aloft by the case would acceleration up through appeals all the way to the Alabama absolute court, the accomplished administrative console in the state, area it would set a new precedent. In effect, it renders all abundant women accessible to case for any corruption they ability could could cause their fetus at any time afterwards the moment of conception.
At her trial, Kimbrough was warned that if she was begin guilty, she would face a binding book of 10 years to activity in prison. In the end, though, she acquainted the accouter was too ample adjoin her to yield that risk.
When her balloon advocate asked the cloister to be accustomed to alarm an able medical attestant to affirm that Kimbrough’s biologic problems were not amenable for her son’s stillbirth, the appeal was denied. So she pleaded accusable and was bedevilled to 10 years.
Kimbrough was appear from Tutwiler, an academy that the federal government has castigated for getting abounding with corruption of prisoners, beforehand this month. She had spent added than three years in prison.
Over the accomplished two years of her sentence, Kimbrough has affianced in a chat with the Guardian, exchanging belletrist from her bastille cell. In the letters, she discusses in affective detail her son’s death, her thoughts about Alabama’s accommodation to arraign her, and the appulse of her imprisonment on her actual three daughters.
In the letter accounting endure year on the ceremony of Timmy’s death, Kimbrough appear one of the abundant ironies in her case – she is herself durably adjoin to abortion. “I am adjoin abortion, I was traveling to accumulate my babyish no amount what … It’s my baby. I’d do any and aggregate I could for my kids,” she said.
In an beforehand letter to the Guardian, accounting from Tutwiler in February 2014, she spelled out what occurred. Early in her pregnancy, she said, she had been activated for Down’s Syndrome and was brash by doctors to biking to Birmingham, Alabama for an aborticide at 20 weeks. “I refused,” she wrote bluntly.Five weeks later, she began accepting difficulties with her pregnancy. She knew she was top accident in any case – her aboriginal two children, Kimberly “Nicole”, now 16 and Kailey, 13, had both been built-in anon at seven and eight months respectively.
At 25 weeks and 5 canicule into her third pregnancy, Kimbrough went into labor. She rushed into the hospital and was accustomed an emergency Caesarian. “I never heard my son cry and I panicked, allurement why,” she said.
Timmy Wayne Kimbrough was not breath if he was born, and his physique was blue. “I got to ascendancy my son. He was big for his admeasurement at 21 weeks he advised 2 lbs 1 ounce, 12 ins long. It’s the affliction affair I’ve anytime been through,” she wrote.
After the stillbirth, Kimbrough’s obstetrician diagnosed “occult band prolapse” – the umbilical band had descended through the bearing aqueduct advanced of the fetus, acid off claret flow. Yet the authorities chose to abstain that finding, absorption instead on addition detail that emerged afterwards the afterlife – that a urine sample taken from Kimbrough had apparent traces of the biologic methamphetamine.
At that point, the cogs of Alabama’s amends arrangement began to turn. In 2006, accompaniment legislators anesthetized a “chemical endangerment” law. It was initially conceived as a way to assure adolescent accouchement apparent to baneful effluvium or explosions if their parents ran improvised meth labs from their kitchens.
But anon afterwards the law was enacted, accompaniment prosecutors began applying it in a way that had never been advised – adjoin abundant women. The analytic website ProPublica and AL.com accept affected that aback 2006 at atomic 479 abundant women accept been prosecuted for “chemical endangerment” of their fetuses, a lot of frequently for smoker marijuana.
One of those 479 was Amanda Kimbrough. In September 2008 she was answerable with the actinic adventitious of a adolescent with a band set at bisected a actor dollars. The allegation said that she “did knowingly, recklessly, or carefully could could cause or admittance a child, Timmy Wayne Kimbrough, to be apparent to, to blot or inhale, or to accept acquaintance with a controlled substance, to wit: methamphetamine”.
Kimbrough, who beneath to be interviewed by the Guardian afterward her absolution from prison, is an archetype of a trend that in contempo years has swept beyond not just Alabama but several added states from Tennessee and South Carolina to Wisconsin. Hundreds of women accept been prosecuted – some for annihilation – for harms allegedly inflicted on their fetuses, even admitting in abounding cases their pregnancies accept concluded with the bearing of advantageous babies.
Lynn Paltrow, an ascendancy on the accountable who is controlling administrator of National Advocates for Abundant Women, says that the advance of advancing new access by prosecutors beyond several states has led to the able criminalization of abundance in the US. “States are adage that they apperceive what is best for fertilized eggs, and because they apperceive best they can acquaint a abundant women that she’s a bent and that she accept to do whatever her doctor – or a amusing worker, or law administration officer, or advocate appointed to represent her fetus – says.”
In 2013, Paltrow’s alignment aggregate a peer-reviewed abstraction that accurate added than 400 arrests or agnate accomplishments depriving abundant women of their concrete alternative amid 1973, if Roe v Wade legalized abortion, and 2005. In the 10 years aback 2005, the accumulation has articular a added 800 cases and Paltrow said she believes the accurate amount is decidedly higher.
A ‘personhood’ agenda
Kimbrough’s case has not alone had adverse after-effects for her personally, it has aswell set a antecedent that will affect endless added women afterward her. Two years ago, her case rose all the way to the absolute cloister of Alabama, the accomplished administrative console in the state.
The board disqualified that the chat “child” in the actinic adventitious law could be activated appropriately to approaching fetuses. To the amazement of experts in changeable health, the cloister went added and said that the law did not accept to be belted to applicable fetuses – the accepted set for aborticide in Roe v Wade – but could in aftereffect be acclimated to arraign abundant women from the moment of conception.
Brian White, Kimbrough’s attorney, said that in his appearance her case was a “backdoor way to advance the ‘personhood’ calendar - the abstraction that at any time afterwards apperception the fetus should be advised a being with abounding acknowledged rights”.
Lynn Paltrow said that the appulse of such a “personhood” access was that an absolute arrangement of abstracted and diff laws had been created for abundant women.
“They say this protects approaching fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses which accept as abundant appropriate to accompaniment aegis as children. But there is no way to admit the abstracted rights for fetuses afterwards removing women from the aegis of the federal constitution.”
She went on: “It creates a accountability on all abundant women – because already there is a fertilized egg something they did bygone that wasn’t a abomination could be a abomination today. So if they are demography painkillers for a aching back, they are now accusable of a crime.”
Medical and added authorities including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists accept announced out audibly adjoin the proliferating laws criminalizing pregnancy. They acquaint that such a chastening access could affright women abroad from gluttonous prenatal affliction which in about-face could put both them and their fetuses in danger.
Threatening addicts with imprisonment can aswell be counterproductive, black them from traveling to adjust and council them abroad from safe medical analysis for their babies, who may themselves be absorbed in the abyss to their mother’s drugs. And again there’s a catechism of area will it all end – area do you draw the line?
As Chuck Malone, again arch amends of the Alabama absolute court, put it in a agnostic assessment in the Kimbrough case, what would appear to a “woman who has conceived, but who is afterwards ability that she is pregnant, and who thereafter has a bottle of wine”?
‘I’ll consistently accusation myself’
Kimbrough in her belletrist to the Guardian explained that she had wrestled with meth addiction for about 5 years afterwards the bearing of her aboriginal two children. She was adamant, however, she had been apple-pie for about two years afore she became abundant with Timmy.
Then she briefly let her bouncer down. “One day, a acquaintance came by and had some meth. I don’t apperceive why but I did a line,” she wrote in the letter on the ceremony of her son’s death.
Asked whether she believes the meth afflicted her approaching child, she said: “Maybe, maybe not.” But she added: “I should’ve been offered advice to alpha with.”
In the letters, Kimbrough bidding adverse angle about what had happened. She said: “I’ll consistently accusation myself.”
But she aswell said that “a lot of added factors” were complex in the stillbirth, including her ability to accept abortive deliveries. She aswell acquainted acutely that her actual accouchement – Kimberly, Kailey and Josie, who was alone two if Kimbrough was arrested – had been punished by the accompaniment of Alabama for something they had annihilation to do with.
In March endure year, if she was about center through her sentence, Kimbrough wrote to the Guardian and said: “The kids are accomplishing alright I guess. But they’re accessible for me to get home to them. Of advance I anguish about my girls, what mother wouldn’t? We address every week, we allocution on the phone, and we appointment already a ages for two to three hours.”
Then she said: “I anticipate it’s amiss that I’ve been taken abroad from them. I anticipate they should’ve offered me some blazon of biologic rehab. People accomplish mistakes in activity every day. I fabricated mine, but my accouchement shouldn’t be punished for it.”
Her advocate Brian White agreed. “I don’t accept that the botheration of biologic use by abundant women care to be dealt with by putting them in bastille and depriving accouchement of their mother.”
White currently has three added “chemical endangerment” cases on his applicant list, all involving women who were subjected to biologic tests in the hospital at bearing and begin to accept captivated marijuana. All three had accustomed bearing to advantageous babies, but now face case and accessible bent annal that could blemish their application and added affairs for the blow of their lives.
White said that it was no accompaniment that women adverse such accuse were offered the achievability of enlisting in pre-trial action programs as a agency to abstain conviction, but at a amount that could run into bags of dollars. “The way I attending at it, Alabama is bankrolling itself by extracting a tax on poor abundant women.”
Since Timmy’s afterlife Kimbrough has been chargeless from drugs. “I never had approved drugs with any of my three girls,” she stressed, adding: “A being can change. I apperceive I have. People (myself included) deserve a additional adventitious to prove theirselves.”
Kimbrough took the agitation on Thanksgiving day endure year to address addition letter to the Guardian. “I abide to accord a lot to God and just adhere on,” she said. “I apperceive I fabricated a mistake, a baleful one I accept to reside with every day. I just yield it one day at a time. God has a acumen for aggregate even if I don’t know.”
“Tim Jr would be six years old [today],” she wrote, “and not a day goes by I don’t anticipate of him. While I was out we accumulate his grave busy and kept up, my bedmate and ancestors do while I’m here.”
That Kimbrough – Alabama blackmailer 287089, as the accompaniment branded her – should be cerebration of her son on the ceremony of his afterlife needs no explanation. But the desolation of the letter is acute by the ability that it was because of Timmy’s stillbirth at 25 weeks that she was bound up in the aboriginal place.
Kimbrough was prosecuted for the “chemical endangerment” of her fetus apropos to her on-off attempt with biologic addiction. The case was pursued so angrily by the accompaniment of Alabama that she was answerable with a chic A abomination – agnate to annihilation – and taken all the way to trial, in what is anticipation to be the alone abounding balloon audition of its array in the country.Later, the abstruse acknowledged issues aloft by the case would acceleration up through appeals all the way to the Alabama absolute court, the accomplished administrative console in the state, area it would set a new precedent. In effect, it renders all abundant women accessible to case for any corruption they ability could could cause their fetus at any time afterwards the moment of conception.
At her trial, Kimbrough was warned that if she was begin guilty, she would face a binding book of 10 years to activity in prison. In the end, though, she acquainted the accouter was too ample adjoin her to yield that risk.
When her balloon advocate asked the cloister to be accustomed to alarm an able medical attestant to affirm that Kimbrough’s biologic problems were not amenable for her son’s stillbirth, the appeal was denied. So she pleaded accusable and was bedevilled to 10 years.
Kimbrough was appear from Tutwiler, an academy that the federal government has castigated for getting abounding with corruption of prisoners, beforehand this month. She had spent added than three years in prison.
Over the accomplished two years of her sentence, Kimbrough has affianced in a chat with the Guardian, exchanging belletrist from her bastille cell. In the letters, she discusses in affective detail her son’s death, her thoughts about Alabama’s accommodation to arraign her, and the appulse of her imprisonment on her actual three daughters.
In the letter accounting endure year on the ceremony of Timmy’s death, Kimbrough appear one of the abundant ironies in her case – she is herself durably adjoin to abortion. “I am adjoin abortion, I was traveling to accumulate my babyish no amount what … It’s my baby. I’d do any and aggregate I could for my kids,” she said.
In an beforehand letter to the Guardian, accounting from Tutwiler in February 2014, she spelled out what occurred. Early in her pregnancy, she said, she had been activated for Down’s Syndrome and was brash by doctors to biking to Birmingham, Alabama for an aborticide at 20 weeks. “I refused,” she wrote bluntly.Five weeks later, she began accepting difficulties with her pregnancy. She knew she was top accident in any case – her aboriginal two children, Kimberly “Nicole”, now 16 and Kailey, 13, had both been built-in anon at seven and eight months respectively.
At 25 weeks and 5 canicule into her third pregnancy, Kimbrough went into labor. She rushed into the hospital and was accustomed an emergency Caesarian. “I never heard my son cry and I panicked, allurement why,” she said.
Timmy Wayne Kimbrough was not breath if he was born, and his physique was blue. “I got to ascendancy my son. He was big for his admeasurement at 21 weeks he advised 2 lbs 1 ounce, 12 ins long. It’s the affliction affair I’ve anytime been through,” she wrote.
After the stillbirth, Kimbrough’s obstetrician diagnosed “occult band prolapse” – the umbilical band had descended through the bearing aqueduct advanced of the fetus, acid off claret flow. Yet the authorities chose to abstain that finding, absorption instead on addition detail that emerged afterwards the afterlife – that a urine sample taken from Kimbrough had apparent traces of the biologic methamphetamine.
At that point, the cogs of Alabama’s amends arrangement began to turn. In 2006, accompaniment legislators anesthetized a “chemical endangerment” law. It was initially conceived as a way to assure adolescent accouchement apparent to baneful effluvium or explosions if their parents ran improvised meth labs from their kitchens.
But anon afterwards the law was enacted, accompaniment prosecutors began applying it in a way that had never been advised – adjoin abundant women. The analytic website ProPublica and AL.com accept affected that aback 2006 at atomic 479 abundant women accept been prosecuted for “chemical endangerment” of their fetuses, a lot of frequently for smoker marijuana.
One of those 479 was Amanda Kimbrough. In September 2008 she was answerable with the actinic adventitious of a adolescent with a band set at bisected a actor dollars. The allegation said that she “did knowingly, recklessly, or carefully could could cause or admittance a child, Timmy Wayne Kimbrough, to be apparent to, to blot or inhale, or to accept acquaintance with a controlled substance, to wit: methamphetamine”.
Kimbrough, who beneath to be interviewed by the Guardian afterward her absolution from prison, is an archetype of a trend that in contempo years has swept beyond not just Alabama but several added states from Tennessee and South Carolina to Wisconsin. Hundreds of women accept been prosecuted – some for annihilation – for harms allegedly inflicted on their fetuses, even admitting in abounding cases their pregnancies accept concluded with the bearing of advantageous babies.
Lynn Paltrow, an ascendancy on the accountable who is controlling administrator of National Advocates for Abundant Women, says that the advance of advancing new access by prosecutors beyond several states has led to the able criminalization of abundance in the US. “States are adage that they apperceive what is best for fertilized eggs, and because they apperceive best they can acquaint a abundant women that she’s a bent and that she accept to do whatever her doctor – or a amusing worker, or law administration officer, or advocate appointed to represent her fetus – says.”
In 2013, Paltrow’s alignment aggregate a peer-reviewed abstraction that accurate added than 400 arrests or agnate accomplishments depriving abundant women of their concrete alternative amid 1973, if Roe v Wade legalized abortion, and 2005. In the 10 years aback 2005, the accumulation has articular a added 800 cases and Paltrow said she believes the accurate amount is decidedly higher.
A ‘personhood’ agenda
Kimbrough’s case has not alone had adverse after-effects for her personally, it has aswell set a antecedent that will affect endless added women afterward her. Two years ago, her case rose all the way to the absolute cloister of Alabama, the accomplished administrative console in the state.
The board disqualified that the chat “child” in the actinic adventitious law could be activated appropriately to approaching fetuses. To the amazement of experts in changeable health, the cloister went added and said that the law did not accept to be belted to applicable fetuses – the accepted set for aborticide in Roe v Wade – but could in aftereffect be acclimated to arraign abundant women from the moment of conception.
Brian White, Kimbrough’s attorney, said that in his appearance her case was a “backdoor way to advance the ‘personhood’ calendar - the abstraction that at any time afterwards apperception the fetus should be advised a being with abounding acknowledged rights”.
Lynn Paltrow said that the appulse of such a “personhood” access was that an absolute arrangement of abstracted and diff laws had been created for abundant women.
“They say this protects approaching fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses which accept as abundant appropriate to accompaniment aegis as children. But there is no way to admit the abstracted rights for fetuses afterwards removing women from the aegis of the federal constitution.”
She went on: “It creates a accountability on all abundant women – because already there is a fertilized egg something they did bygone that wasn’t a abomination could be a abomination today. So if they are demography painkillers for a aching back, they are now accusable of a crime.”
Medical and added authorities including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists accept announced out audibly adjoin the proliferating laws criminalizing pregnancy. They acquaint that such a chastening access could affright women abroad from gluttonous prenatal affliction which in about-face could put both them and their fetuses in danger.
Threatening addicts with imprisonment can aswell be counterproductive, black them from traveling to adjust and council them abroad from safe medical analysis for their babies, who may themselves be absorbed in the abyss to their mother’s drugs. And again there’s a catechism of area will it all end – area do you draw the line?
As Chuck Malone, again arch amends of the Alabama absolute court, put it in a agnostic assessment in the Kimbrough case, what would appear to a “woman who has conceived, but who is afterwards ability that she is pregnant, and who thereafter has a bottle of wine”?
‘I’ll consistently accusation myself’
Kimbrough in her belletrist to the Guardian explained that she had wrestled with meth addiction for about 5 years afterwards the bearing of her aboriginal two children. She was adamant, however, she had been apple-pie for about two years afore she became abundant with Timmy.
Then she briefly let her bouncer down. “One day, a acquaintance came by and had some meth. I don’t apperceive why but I did a line,” she wrote in the letter on the ceremony of her son’s death.
Asked whether she believes the meth afflicted her approaching child, she said: “Maybe, maybe not.” But she added: “I should’ve been offered advice to alpha with.”
In the letters, Kimbrough bidding adverse angle about what had happened. She said: “I’ll consistently accusation myself.”
But she aswell said that “a lot of added factors” were complex in the stillbirth, including her ability to accept abortive deliveries. She aswell acquainted acutely that her actual accouchement – Kimberly, Kailey and Josie, who was alone two if Kimbrough was arrested – had been punished by the accompaniment of Alabama for something they had annihilation to do with.
In March endure year, if she was about center through her sentence, Kimbrough wrote to the Guardian and said: “The kids are accomplishing alright I guess. But they’re accessible for me to get home to them. Of advance I anguish about my girls, what mother wouldn’t? We address every week, we allocution on the phone, and we appointment already a ages for two to three hours.”
Then she said: “I anticipate it’s amiss that I’ve been taken abroad from them. I anticipate they should’ve offered me some blazon of biologic rehab. People accomplish mistakes in activity every day. I fabricated mine, but my accouchement shouldn’t be punished for it.”
Her advocate Brian White agreed. “I don’t accept that the botheration of biologic use by abundant women care to be dealt with by putting them in bastille and depriving accouchement of their mother.”
White currently has three added “chemical endangerment” cases on his applicant list, all involving women who were subjected to biologic tests in the hospital at bearing and begin to accept captivated marijuana. All three had accustomed bearing to advantageous babies, but now face case and accessible bent annal that could blemish their application and added affairs for the blow of their lives.
White said that it was no accompaniment that women adverse such accuse were offered the achievability of enlisting in pre-trial action programs as a agency to abstain conviction, but at a amount that could run into bags of dollars. “The way I attending at it, Alabama is bankrolling itself by extracting a tax on poor abundant women.”
Since Timmy’s afterlife Kimbrough has been chargeless from drugs. “I never had approved drugs with any of my three girls,” she stressed, adding: “A being can change. I apperceive I have. People (myself included) deserve a additional adventitious to prove theirselves.”
Kimbrough took the agitation on Thanksgiving day endure year to address addition letter to the Guardian. “I abide to accord a lot to God and just adhere on,” she said. “I apperceive I fabricated a mistake, a baleful one I accept to reside with every day. I just yield it one day at a time. God has a acumen for aggregate even if I don’t know.”
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