Pleads guilty to attempted procurement of a miscarriage
By Dave Andrusko
Anna Yocca (MURFREESBORO POLICE DEPARTMENT)
Anna Yocca, the Tennessee woman who used a coat hanger in 2015 to try to self-abort her 24-week-old unborn child, was released Monday after pleading guilty to attempted procurement of a miscarriage in exchange for her release from jail.
Yocca, who had been in jail for a year, was sentenced to one year in prison and was granted time served, according to NBC News.
Although grievously injured, the baby boy survived Yocca’s attack. He weighed 1 pound, five ounces at birth. The child, initially placed in foster care, has since been adopted.
In December 2015 Yocca was charged with attempted first-degree murder, a charge was dropped. In November 2016, she was charged with three felonies: aggravated assault with a weapon, attempted criminal abortion, and attempted procurement of a miscarriage.
On Monday the first two charges were dropped, and Yocca was convicted only of the third felony.
“She was released from the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center on Monday at 9:10 p.m. local time (10:10 p.m. ET), according to the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office,” according to reporter Daniel Silva.
In September 2015, Yocca filled a bathtub with a few inches of water, then used a coat hanger to repeatedly stab her baby. “That’s when officials said the amount of blood alarmed her, and her boyfriend took her to the emergency room at St. Thomas Rutherford hospital,” according to Sam Stockard of the Murfreesboro Post. “From there, she was transported to St. Thomas Mid-Town in Nashville where staff members saved ‘Baby Yocca.’”
News Channel 5’s Jesse Knutson reported that at the time Yocca was arrested, “Police said the coat hanger caused significant damage to the child’s eyes, lungs, and heart.”
Stockard reported
Even though the baby survived the trauma. physicians said the boy’s quality of life “will be forever harmed.” He will need a medically-experienced foster parent, remain on oxygen and take medication daily because of problems with his eyes, lungs and heart stemming from damage caused by the coat hanger. Medical staff also said other physical problems will arise when the child grows older.
Emblematic of the pro-abortion mindset, Lynn Paltrow, the executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, told NBC News “many of those ailments could have been caused by the baby’s premature birth,” not the brutality of the assault.