People around the world have pledged money towards crowdfunders raising the bail set for a woman charged with the manslaughter of her baby after she was shot in the stomach.
Marshae Jones was five months’ pregnant when 23-year-old Ebony Jemison shot her in the stomach during a December altercation regarding the unborn child’s father.
Jemison was initially charged with manslaughter, but a Jefferson County grand jury declined to indict her after police said an investigation determined Jones started the fight, and Jemison ultimately fired in self-defence.
Jones, 28, was indicted by the same grand jury on Wednesday and is custody at Jefferson County Jail where she is being held on a $50,000 bond as she awaits trial.
The indictment stated Jones did “intentionally cause the death” of “Unborn Baby Jones by initiating a fight knowing she was five months pregnant”.
Both the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund and the Yellowhammer Fund are among those accepting donations to meet Jones’s bail and advocates for women’s rights are expressing outrage over her arrest.
Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, said women across the country have been prosecuted for manslaughter or murder for having an abortion or experiencing a miscarriage.
She said Alabama currently leads the nation in charging women for crimes related to their pregnancies.
She said hundreds have been prosecuted for contravening the state’s “chemical endangerment of a child” statute by exposing their embryo or foetus to controlled substances.
But this is the first time she has heard of a pregnant woman being charged after getting shot.
“This takes us to a new level of inhumanity and illegality towards pregnant women,” Paltrow said.
“I can’t think of any other circumstance where a person who themselves is a victim of a crime is treated as the criminal.”
Supporters to bail Marshae have reacted with horror. “So it’s illegal to not have a bulletproof uterus. Got it,” wrote Samantha Caster.
Sian Taylor Shackleford commented: “I watched the Handmaid’s Tale not for entertainment, but as a survival manual. Alabama is basically Gilead already!”
“If this isn’t a stepping stone case to relegate pregnant bodies into the role of government controlled hosts, I don’t know what is,” opined Izabela Sliwinska.
However, the office of District Attorney Lynneice O Washington said there has been no decision as yet on whether to pursue the case against Jones.
Washington’s office said in a statement they “feel sympathy for all the families involved, including Jones, who lost her unborn child”.
While the grand jury “had its say”, the statement said, the office has “not yet made a determination about whether to prosecute it as a manslaughter case, reduce it to a lesser charge or not to prosecute it”.
“Foremost, it should be stated that this is a truly tragic case, resulting in the death of an unborn child,” the prosecutor’s office said.
“The fact that this tragedy was 100% avoidable makes this case even more disheartening.”
After the shooting, Pleasant Grove police Lt Danny Reid had called the foetus “the only true victim”, who was unnecessarily brought into a fight and was “dependent on its mother to try to keep it from harm”.
Jemison’s mother Earka told the Washington Post her daughter, who has a license to carry a gun, was receiving threatening messages over the matter.
She said the argument had been about the unborn child’s father and began when Jones spotted Ebony and jumped out of a car to attack her.
She said: “Ebony was afraid for her life and reached in her purse for the gun. She tried to fire a warning shot to get away from her.”
But the shot – which Earka says was aimed at the ground – ricocheted into Jones instead.
The district attorney’s office said it will decide how to proceed “only after all due diligence has been performed”.
Alabama is one of dozens of states that have foetal homicide laws allowing criminal charges when foetuses are killed in violent acts, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
It enacted the country’s strictest restrictions on abortion last month, when Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed a measure that bans the procedure in nearly every instance, including cases of rape and incest.