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FLORENCE, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge said he would dismiss a lawsuit filed by a pregnant prisoner who sought an abortion after the woman told him during a hearing Friday she had changed her mind and now wants to deliver the child, a reversal called "highly suspicious" by one of her lawyers.
The woman's change of heart came as a prosecutor said separately the state was shelving an effort to strip her of parental rights over the fetus and delaying prosecution on two drug-related charges while the woman enters in-patient addiction treatment at a state-certified facility.
Randall Marshall, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented the woman in the lawsuit seeking an abortion, questioned outside court whether the woman was somehow pressured or coerced into the flip-flop.
"It's all very convenient and suspicious how this all came about," said Marshall. He said "tremendous pressure" can be exerted on prisoners by authorities.
But seated in court in a green jail uniform, the woman — identified only as Jane Doe in court documents — answered a series of questions from U.S. District Judge Abdul Kallon, indicating she made the decision on her own without any threats, coercion or promises.
The responses satisfied Kallon, who said he would dismiss the lawsuit she filed last week against Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton seeking a release from jail so she could travel to Huntsville for an abortion.
Originally arrested on a drug charge, the woman was pregnant when she entered the county jail, court documents show. She was additionally charged with chemical endangerment of a child after testing positive for drugs, said District Attorney Chris Connolly.
The woman is in her first trimester of pregnancy, court documents show.
Connolly said his office filed suit to terminate the woman's parental rights over the unborn child because of the chemical endangerment charge, not as "some kind of pro-life thing" to block an abortion in a conservative state. Alabama Supreme Court precedent allowed the action, he said.
Maurice McCaney, an attorney appointed to represent the woman in the parental rights case, said she told him during a series of meetings this week that she had decided to have the child rather than seek an abortion. McCaney said there was never any discussion of dropping charges against the woman in return for a decision to continue the pregnancy.
"I certainly did not dangle anything in front of her like a carrot," McCaney said after the hearing.
Connolly said the state's attempt to seize the woman's parental rights will be put on hold while she is treated for drug dependency at an in-patient center, and the drug-related charges will be put on hold at least until she completes treatment.
Similar agreements occur frequently in such cases, Connolly said, and the charges eventually could be dismissed should the woman do well in treatment.
"We are not trying to send her to prison. We are trying to work with her so she can become a productive member of the community and a good mother to that child," said the prosecutor.
Marshall, the ACLU attorney, said the case "has red flags all over it," but Connolly accused the ACLU of using the woman as a "pawn" to grandstand in favor of abortion rights.
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