Pregnant Woman Who Shot Herself in Stomach and Killed Baby is Acquitted

Before dawn on the morning of February 23, 2006, the same winter day that Tammy Skinner felt contractions begin - signaling the arrival of her soon-to-be born baby daughter - the then 22-year-old Tammy couldn't sleep.

Tammy got dressed and, bringing her handgun with her, drove behind a grocery store into a dark spot. "I sat there for a while and told the Lord that my mind was not right," Skinner reportedly told a detective. 

The first time Tammy pulled the trigger, the gun didn't fire. The second time Skinner tried to shoot herself in the stomach, the gun didn't fail. Tammy's full-term baby girl died as a result of the gun shot wound.

Next Skinner phoned the police from a car dealership and claimed that a man shot her in the stomach and pushed her out of the car. Later, Skinner changed her testimony and said that the baby's father shot her. Eventually, Tammy confessed to a detective that it wasn't the first time she had considered killing her unborn child.

According to the Virginia-Pilot, Skinner, now 23, was "charged in Circuit Court with producing an abortion or miscarriage, a felony charge that her attorney argues cannot be used to prosecute a woman who ends her own pregnancy." 

A lower court judge had already thrown out a charge of producing an abortion against Skinner, concluding that the law was not aimed at pregnant mothers who harm themselves or their yet-to-be born children. Yet the case was resurrected this summer when prosecutors went to a grand jury, who directly indicted Tammy Skinner in July. 

A jury trial was scheduled for Nov. 2 regarding the case against Skinner. 

But today Circuit Court Judge Westbrook Parker heard arguments in Skinner's case, including a motion to dismiss the case, and decided to drop the felony charge against Tammy Skinner, effectively ending all prosecution against the underprivileged mother of two.

Tammy Skinner's father has said that his daughter suffered from depression. Tammy, who spoke with Detective T.L. Cooper five days after the fatal shooting, told him she "did not have any choices" and "wanted to harm the baby."