Emily Weaver, a 20-year-old former sophomore at Ohio’s Muskingum University, was arrested after allegedly killing her baby right after giving birth and asphyxiating it in a trash bag outside her Delta Gamma sorority house. She has been charged with aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence.
Weaver is being held $1 million bail and could be sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, if she had dropped the child off at the police station— just an eight-minute walk from her sorority house —she would have faced no charges.
The Columbus Dispatch reports:
Ohio has had a Safe Haven law since 2001 that protects mothers from prosecution if they leave their baby up to 30 days old at a fire station or with someone such as a hospital employee, police officer or emergency medical worker and the child has not been abused. The baby can be dropped off anonymously and is placed in the care of a local children services agency.
“What a hurtful tragedy to think that a newborn could be given a chance at a healthy, stable life by doing nothing more than saying, ‘I can’t do this. Can you take her?’ It’s breathtakingly tragic,” said Dave Boyer, director of the Muskingum County Children Services.
“There has been a lot of discussion within our community as to why this situation happened twice at the same institute of higher learning,” Boyer continued. “What are we doing wrong, and what do we need to do differently because it is intolerable to think that babies need to lose their lives. We have to respond boldly and demonstrably. And we will.”
Weaver is shockingly the second Muskingum University student to have thrown away her newborn baby. The first in 2003 allegedly thought the baby was stillborn and was sentenced to three years in prison, of which she served six months.
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