A Wellesley woman pleaded guilty to manslaughter and assault charges today, taking responsibility for the death of an unborn fetus rather than face trial, Suffolk County District attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

AYANNA WOODHOUSE (D.O.B. 3/16/85) admitted to beating a 26-year-old woman who was six months pregnant in a Dorchester nail salon on the evening of April 10, 2010. The expecting mother was hospitalized later that night; the baby girl was delivered by emergency Cesarean section early the next morning but was stillborn.

Assistant District Attorney Leora Joseph of Conley’s Child Protection Unit recommended that Woodhouse serve four to five years in state prison on the manslaughter charge followed by five years of probation on her release for an additional count of aggravated assault and battery. Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol Ball sentenced Woodhouse to two years in a house of correction followed by three years of probation.

The mother of the child addressed the court in an impact statement Joseph read prior to sentencing.

“I was so excited to meet her, not knowing I would never get that chance,” the mother said of the child she was prevented from bringing to term. “I been through sleepless nights of her kicking me, or having bad heartburn but knowing it was for a good cause …. Why did this have to happen? And how can you love and miss someone so much who you never even met? My daughter is in a better place now, but I always thought that better place would be right here with me.”

Had the case proceeded to trial, Joseph would have introduced evidence and testimony to prove that the two women were known to one another through the child’s father and – by chance – had separately scheduled appointments at Tulips Nail Salon on Neponset Avenue that evening.

A dispute erupted between the two, during which Woodhouse rose to her feet and punched the mother in the face, knocking her to the ground. She continued to beat the visibly pregnant mother, who lay on the ground trying to defend herself. Several of the blows landed on the woman’s stomach.

The mother was later transported to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where the baby girl was delivered in an emergency Cesarean section. The baby did not survive. After autopsy, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled the cause of her death to be placental abruption – a detachment of the placenta from the uterus – due to maternal trauma.

Under Massachusetts law, a homicide charge may be brought in the death of an unborn baby if the fetus was medically viable at the time of the trauma that ended its life. At six months, medical experts agreed, the victim in this case was medically viable.

Kathryn DiPerna was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. The defendant was represented by attorney Robert Galibois II.