By
The Associated Press
ATTLEBORO, Mass. - A judge yesterday ordered a pregnant member of a fundamentalist sect held in state custody until her baby is born, saying he could sense what the fetus would say to him: "I don't want to die like my brother."
Rebecca Corneau, 32, was ordered placed in a secure institution for pregnant women last week because she refused to consent to a court-ordered medical examination. Her sect rejects conventional medicine as blasphemy.
She is suspected of covering up the death of her last child in a case still under investigation.
Prosecutors and a court-appointed lawyer for the fetus asked Judge Kenneth Nasif yesterday to keep Corneau in state custody for her safety and that of her unborn child. The judge obliged, extending his custody order 30 days or until the child is born.
Corneau is believed to be 8 1/2 months pregnant.
The judge said he could sense what the child would say to him.
"I want to live. I don't want to die. I don't want to die like my brother, Jeremiah, did," Nasif said, according to Gerald FitzGerald, a prosecutor who attended the closed hearing.
The woman has refused to have an attorney.
The American Civil Liberties Union supported her yesterday, saying in a friend of the court brief that the ruling deprives Corneau of her constitutional right to privacy.
"The law does not require parents to undergo medical procedures to benefit their born children," said ACLU attorney Sarah Wunsch. "It certainly cannot force a pregnant woman to be treated on behalf of her fetus."
The woman's husband, David Corneau, is among eight sect members in jail for refusing to cooperate in an investigation of the sect that includes the disappearance and presumed death of another child.
The Attleboro-based group of Christian fundamentalists consists of about two dozen adults and children from related families. The group teaches that women should honor their husbands as second only to God, rejecting government, organized religion, banking, science and medicine.
