On November 15th, Jennifer Fox was kicked in the stomach and pepper-sprayed by the Seattle Police. She was three months pregnant. Here’s a brief video of her sitting on the sidewalk in considerable pain.
She went to doctor and had a sonogram. Initially, everything looked okay. But she had a miscarriage on November 20th. She talked to The Stranger, and this is what she claims:
“Everything was going okay until yesterday, when I started getting sick, cramps started, and I felt like I was going to pass out,” Fox says.
A friend called for an ambulance near the community college campus. (Fox says she has been camping with Occupy Seattle since it first began in Westlake Park. She is homeless and says, “I don’t have a place. This is the place I call home.”) When she arrived at Harborview at 11:00 a.m., she says, a doctor told her that “there was no heartbeat” from the baby. “They diagnosed that I was having a miscarriage. They said the damage was from the kick and that the pepper spray got to it [the fetus], too.”
As for joining the protests, she says, “I was worried about it, but I didn’t know it would be this bad. I didn’t know that a cop would murder a baby that’s not born yet… I am trying to get lawyers.”
I repeatedly asked Fox if she could provide any medical records that confirm the miscarriage or that the clash with police officers caused it. She did not have copies but says she asked her case worker at Harborview to provide her with records (I’ll continue to ask for follow-up evidence and post if and when Fox provides those records). Harboview officials say they cannot provide any information, of course, except that medical records would mention those details. The Seattle Police Department did not immediately respond to request for comment.
I don’t expect the right to demonstrate their “pro-life” concern. I assume they will attack this unfortunate woman for being pregnant and homeless and unmarried and an anti-American left-wing loon. That’s just how they roll.
Of course, if there is proof that the fetus was negatively affected by the pepper spray or the kick, we have not yet seen that proof. But it’s something to think about before you go casually pepper-spraying college-age women in the face.
She was going to name the baby ‘Miracle’ and her parents were going to help her raise it.
Update [2011-11-22 21:57:36 by BooMan]: The original Stranger article has been updated with some information that raises a degree of uncertainty about Ms. Fox’s claims. She needs to clear it up tomorrow by getting the paperwork, if it exists.
