The charge was
"On or about the 13th day of July, 2013, in St. Joseph County, State of Indiana, PURVI PATEL, who is more than eighteen (18) years old, and having the care of a dependent, did knowingly place that dependent in a situation that endangered the dependent's life or health by failing to provide any medical care for that dependent immediately after the dependent's birth, resulting in the death of that dependent, who was less than fourteen (14) years old"
According to the examining doctors, she was 28 to 30 weeks pregnant.
media.graytvinc.com/documents/PatelPCAffidavit.pdf
When the body was found in the dumpster, the examining doctor said it was around 30 weeks.
The pathologist said it was 12.2" long, and weighed 1.46lbs. So it definitely was not 8 weeks, from those facts. The pathologist said 28 weeks. Therefore, on simple statistics it would be normal at this age for the baby to survive.
I am not an expert, but the drugs she took are intended for first trimester abortions, and I'm not sure if at the point in pregnancy she took whether the effect would merely be to induce labour (and therefore, as you would expect at this age, the baby was born alive), or if it would tend to kill the foetus as well.
Moreover, it seems the medical question of whether the baby was alive is being made a political one. We are told that 'the float test' is terrible, primitive medicine.
According to this study, however, link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00414-012-0727-1
that is not the case, and in fact out of 208 babies tested, there were zero false positives (lungs that floated when the baby was born dead), and 4 false negatives (lungs that sank, when the baby was born alive).
In this case the defence claims a false positive.
Other studies appear to contradict this but on the face of it, it seems at least likely that she gave birth to a live baby.
I would like to read the full pathologist's report however.