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Pregnant Woman Blasted with Pepper Spray by SPD Says She Miscarried (Updated)

Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 5:45 PM

Posted at 3:55 p.m. and updated below with an interview with Jennifer Fox.

One of Occupy Seattle's outspoken activists who blogs under the name Ian Awesome has a post up this afternoon about the pregnant woman who was hit in last Tuesday's pepper spray attack by Seattle police:

On the 20th, Jeniffer Fox received news that she has miscarried, and alleges the miscarriage is due to the injuries she received during the police action on the 15th.

"It hurts. It's upsetting. I was ready to have a kid, because my family was going to support me in taking care of the child. Her name was going to be Miracle."

UPDATE: Jennifer Fox, 19, spoke to The Stranger at the Occupy Seattle encampment at Seattle Central Community College. Fox claimed that she was three months pregnant last Tuesday evening when she joined an Occupy Seattle march that stopped at the intersection of 5th Avenue and Pine Street.

"I was standing in the middle of the crowd when the police started moving in," she says. "I was screaming, 'I am pregnant, I am pregnant. Let me through. I am trying to get out.'" At that point, Fox continues, a Seattle police officer lifted his foot and it hit her in the stomach, and another officer pushed his bicycle into the crowd, again hitting Fox in the stomach. "Right before I turned, both cops lifted their pepper spray and sprayed me. My eyes puffed up and my eyes swelled shut," she says.

Fox asked for medical attention—the now-famous photo by Josh Trujillo of her being carried to the ambulance is here (click to the second photo)—and was rushed to Harborview Medical Center, she says, where doctors performed an ultrasound and said that they "didn't see anything wrong with the baby at the time." Fox says she had also seen a physician at Harborview for prenatal care about five week before.

"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.

UPDATE at 11:30 PM: IowaBoyDave posted a disturbing video of Fox taken Tuesday night, just after she was pepper sprayed and before medics arrived.



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After the spraying.



spurgeonryan said:
Who goes to a protest where everyone who has half a brain knows tensions have been high pregnant?


I don't think it ever crossed her mind that she would be kicked in the stomach by the police. Sure, she may have made a poor decision in going to the protest, but the fault lies pretty much entirely with the officers who sprayed/kicked her.

This, really, was manslaughter, but nothing will happen with it.



spurgeonryan said:
Who goes to a protest where everyone who has half a brain knows tensions have been high pregnant?



How dare a pregnant woman take part in a political event? Doesn't she know that being sprayed or beaten is guaranteed?



Love and tolerate.

While cameras are everywhere, once again another "peaceful" protestor who was "attacked" by police without any footage of the events ...

While I empathise with her loss, the story is written in a remarkably one-sided fashion full of unsubstantiated claims and accusations without any attempt at balance. Being that the fetus at this age is smaller than your thumb, and is surrounded by tons of soft tissue and organs, I find it highly implausible that you could receive an injury that would harm your baby enough to kill it without also requiring you to be hospitalized.



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HappySqurriel said:
While cameras are everywhere, once again another "peaceful" protestor who was "attacked" by police without any footage of the events ...

While I empathise with her loss, the story is written in a remarkably one-sided fashion full of unsubstantiated claims and accusations without any attempt at balance. Being that the fetus at this age is smaller than your thumb, and is surrounded by tons of soft tissue and organs, I find it highly implausible that you could receive an injury that would harm your baby enough to kill it without also requiring you to be hospitalized.


This, mostly. Its a very biased article. Plus under US law the fetus isn't a life so its not manslaughter anyway.



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spurgeonryan said:
Who goes to a protest where everyone who has half a brain knows tensions have been high pregnant?


I got a better question: what kind of cop pepper sprays and hits a pregnant woman in the stomach who is merely practicing her first ammendment rights?

And it's not even as if she was causing trouble. She was trying to leave! She was telling them she was trying to leave! What reason could the cops possibly have for beating a pregnant women trying to do what they want her to do?

It doesn't matter WHAT was going on there. Hitting a pregnant woman IN THE STOMACH, and treating pepper spray cans like water guns, is not only completely inexcusable, but disgusting. You know pepper spray alone can cause permanent eye and nerve damage? Has anyone hear seen the videos of police spraying protestors with it like their watering PLANTS?

Its disgusting and indefinsible. OWS aint perfect, but the cops have been plenty out of line too.

HappySqurriel said:
 I find it highly implausible that you could receive an injury that would harm your baby enough to kill it without also requiring you to be hospitalized.


Are you a doctor? Or do you just find it highly implausible? I think it's very plausible that when you are punched in the stomach by police, and you then miscarriage a few days later, the punching caused the miscarriage.

I personally don't believe this is murder or manslaughter, for the record. But it's still pretty deplorable.



nuckles87 said:
spurgeonryan said:
Who goes to a protest where everyone who has half a brain knows tensions have been high pregnant?


I got a better question: what kind of cop pepper sprays and hits a pregnant woman in the stomach who is merely practicing her first ammendment rights?

And it's not even as if she was causing trouble. She was trying to leave! She was telling them she was trying to leave! What reason could the cops possibly have for beating a pregnant women trying to do what they want her to do?

It doesn't matter WHAT was going on there. Hitting a pregnant woman IN THE STOMACH, and treating pepper spray cans like water guns, is not only completely inexcusable, but disgusting. You know pepper spray alone can cause permanent eye and nerve damage? Has anyone hear seen the videos of police spraying protestors with it like their watering PLANTS?

Its disgusting and indefinsible. OWS aint perfect, but the cops have been plenty out of line too.

So, because she claimed to be pregnant and claimed to be trying to leave she could disobey the police in the middle of a protest/riot and they have no ability to protect themselves?



without video of the event or medical reports, i dont even know if she did get hit and even then if it was a cop who did it. additionally, i have no idea that this obviously crazy lady didnt deserve to get pepper sprayed.



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nuckles87 said:
HappySqurriel said:
 I find it highly implausible that you could receive an injury that would harm your baby enough to kill it without also requiring you to be hospitalized.


Are you a doctor? Or do you just find it highly implausible? I think it's very plausible that when you are punched in the stomach by police, and you then miscarriage a few days later, the punching caused the miscarriage.

I personally don't believe this is murder or manslaughter, for the record. But it's still pretty deplorable.

It is just physics and anatomy ...

If a woman received a blow hard enough to harm the fetus with how small the fetus is at that point in the pregnancy it would have had-to be hard enough to cause serious harm to the surrounding tissues and organs.

Based on the chart on this page (http://www.pregnancyloss.info/info-howcommon.htm) roughly 5% of pregnancies end in miscarriage at a similar point to this woman's pregnancy (7 to 12 weeks) which is statistically very significant; and it means that it was highly likely that this misscarriage had little/nothing to do with anything that happened at OWS.