A guilty verdict handed to a Vietnamese technical intern trainee for abandoning the bodies of stillborn twins after she gave birth at home triggered an outcry from women who sympathized with her plight.

A group of lawyers representing the woman, Le Thi Thuy Linh, 23, invited written opinions from the public and received 127 replies.

Linh was handed a prison sentence of three months, suspended for two years, by the Fukuoka High Court on Jan. 19.

“Why is she guilty?” was a typical response.

Half of those who responded were mothers themselves.

The case is now in the appeal stage and observers are keeping a close eye on how the Supreme Court, to which the lawyers submitted the written opinions, will address the issues that were raised.

Sayuri Watanabe, a resident of Kanagawa Prefecture neighboring Tokyo, learned in February about the invitation to submit written opinions through a group of friends from university days who use the Line social messaging system.

Watanabe, 36, didn’t waste any time writing up a two-page opinion, taking just 10 minutes or so to express her thoughts on the matter.

“I can’t be silent as someone who has experienced giving birth. I am absolutely not convinced (of the guilty verdict),” she wrote.

Linh had stillborn twins at her home in Kumamoto Prefecture on Nov. 15, 2020.

At the time, she was working at a farm as a technical intern trainee and didn’t consult anyone, not even a doctor, about her pregnancy for fear she would be deported to her home country if her situation came to light.

She wrapped the bodies in a towel and placed them inside a cardboard box with a letter of apology with the infants’ names and a message that read, “Please rest in peace in heaven.”

She went to a hospital next day and said her babies were stillborn.

Linh was arrested three days later on suspicion of abandoning two infant corpses.

The Fukuoka District Court found her guilty and the verdict was upheld by the high court.

STRONG EMOTIONS

As a mother herself, Watanabe was deeply saddened by the verdict, which she felt was unjust.

The incident reminded her of when she gave birth to her eldest son. She recalled being in unbearable pain with her guts feeling twisted as she was rushed to a hospital to undergo a caesarean section.

Watanabe says that the circumstances surrounding the still births, without a doctor or even a nurse present, “must have been an unbelievably tough situation.”

She was particularly touched by Linh’s message to her dead babies, calling it “a marvelous action that shows she cared for them, even when she was exhausted both mentally and physically.”

Watanabe says her heart aches every time she learns through the media about women who kill or abandon their babies after giving birth alone.

She wrote in her opinion: “This is not just Ms. Linh’s issue. It concerns every Japanese woman who has no choice but to give birth alone.”

According to legal experts, Linh’s actions constituted an affront to public sentiment toward the dead and religious emotions that are stirred when people die.

Six Christian pastors jointly submitted a written opinion.

In it, they said, “Can we say that Linh’s action ran counter to the need to protect ‘religious pious feeling toward the dead?’ We are not able to think so however hard we try.”

Shintaro Yanagawa, 33, one of the six pastors who works at a university in Nagoya, concluded that Linh “tried to carefully send off her children who were born in difficult circumstances.”

Kazuyoshi Yanagimoto, 31, who is pastor of a church in Kobe and one of the six who submitted the joint opinion, sympathized with Linh’s predicament, which he said appeared based on an unfounded rumor she would be deported to her country simply because she was pregnant.

He lamented the fact she was not in an environment that allowed her to “safely get pregnant and give birth.”

Yanagimoto said he cannot accept that only Linh must accept liability for what happened. Where, for example, is the father and what responsibility does her employer have, he asked.

The lawyers’ group said the guilty verdict is “entirely devoid of imagination about pregnant women or women after giving birth who are in a very difficult situation, both mentally and physically.”

“What is needed is not a punishment, but analysis on why women are forced to give birth alone.”

In April, Linh attended a news conference in the Kasumigaseki district in Tokyo via a video link. She said, “I never hurt the bodies of the twins, or threw away or hid them.”