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pregnancy justice
Probe of Fetus at South Carolina Water Plant Highlights Criminalization of Pregnancy Loss
"No one should have to live with the fear that their miscarriage or stillbirth could result in cops showing up at their door," said one researcher.
Feb 17, 2026
The number of people who have faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies has soared since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and now, a sheriff's office in South Carolina is investigating a fetus found at a water treatment plant.
The Sumter County Sheriff's Office announced Friday that deputies were called to the plant on Edgehill Road after workers found the fetus, which was sent to the Medical University of South Carolina, according to The State. County Coroner Robbie Baker said that "it was a small fetus. Probably not more than 6 inches long. It was somewhat developed."
Baker shared the findings from the autopsy on Monday: The fetus was just 13-15 weeks, male, and showed no signs of trauma. ABC News 4 reported that he also said this was being ruled a stillborn death—even though a stillbirth is generally defined as a pregnancy loss after 20 weeks, and a loss before that is a miscarriage.
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is "testing tissue samples to determine the race and locate the mother," according to WIS News 10. "The coroner said the race could not be immediately determined due to how long the fetus had been sitting in sewer chemicals."
As Kylie Cheung wrote Monday at Jessica Valenti's newsletter Abortion, Every Day: "Our immediate questions: Why are pregnancy remains being investigated by law enforcement at all? How can 14-week fetal remains be ruled a 'stillborn death'? And why are state authorities trying to determine the race of these pregnancy remains? This is particularly concerning given that women of color are overrepresented among criminal cases involving pregnancy."
Such probes have become "all too routine," Laura Huss, a senior researcher at If/When/How, told Cheung. "Pregnancy losses aren't crimes... No one should have to live with the fear that their miscarriage or stillbirth could result in cops showing up at their door, which is what investigations and media stories like this create."
The advocacy group Pregnancy Justice said last year that "from June 2022 to June 2024—the first two years after the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade—prosecutors initiated at least 412 cases across the country charging individuals with crimes related to their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth."
"So what is the point of this investigation, beyond terrorizing women through control and surveillance of their bodies?"
Since Roe's reversal, far-right politicians and anti-choice organizations have ramped up their push for more state and federal restrictions on reproductive freedom. South Carolina groups that fight for such policies—from abortion bans based on gestational age to fetal personhood legislation—are now using the fetus found there to advocate for new state laws.
One proposal would "require the Department of Environmental Services to conduct testing for urinary metabolites in certain wastewater treatment facilities," Fox Carolina reported. Another would prohibit the "mailing, shipping, or prescribing of abortifacients, including from out-of-state sources," as well as "classify committing or attempting to commit an abortion using an abortifacient on a mother as a felony punishable by up to 10 years imprisonment or a fine of up to $100k."
Almost every action after pregnancy loss has come under scrutiny. Many of these laws, like the crime of “concealing a birth,” date back to the 1600s, used to criminalize unwed women who were thought to be more likely to hide & end their pregnancies, fearing intense societal shame and repercussions.
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— Pregnancy Justice (@pregnancyjust.bsky.social) January 29, 2026 at 11:42 AM
Last month, Pregnancy Justice released a report that "maps the matrix of laws and policies that can be used to criminalize postpartum people for how they respond to their own pregnancy loss in every state." Its section on South Carolina says:
Although South Carolina does not have a broad prenatal personhood law, criminal or otherwise, its state Supreme Court establishes broad criminal prenatal personhood with the harmful proposition that criminal statutes apply to "viable fetuses" unless the Legislature expressly says otherwise. A former attorney general also noted his position that prenatal personhood applies broadly to South Carolina's laws. By extension, an attempt to criminalize the "destruction or desecration" or transportation without a permit of viable fetal remains could be made.
Separately, people are also required to report "stillbirth[s] when unattended by a physician."
Pregnancy Justice legal director Karen Thompson told Cheung that criminal charges shouldn't be applicable in the case of the fetus found in South Carolina, whether it was a miscarriage or an abortion, because of the "viability" requirement in state law. She added, "So what is the point of this investigation, beyond terrorizing women through control and surveillance of their bodies?"
The South Carolina investigation follows last week's arrest of a Kentucky couple, Deann and Charles Bennett, after she was taken to a hospital following a reported miscarriage in November 2024. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, they were each charged with reckless homicide, and she also faces charges of abuse of a corpse, concealing the birth of an infant, and tampering with physical evidence.
Reporting on that case last week, Valenti and Cheung pointed out that "right now, all of the available information is coming from cops and law enforcement—so take it all with a grain of salt. Again and again, Abortion, Every Day has found police lying about these arrests, or misrepresenting what really happened. Too often, local media will parrot those facts' uncritically and destroy people's lives in the process."
"Already, Deann and Charles' mugshots have been splashed across Kentucky crime pages," the pair added. "Deann is seen sobbing in hers."
According to Pregnancy Justice's January report: "Although Kentucky's broad prenatal personhood law is enjoined, the state Supreme Court provides that a viable fetus is a human being within the meaning of the penal code. By extension, an attempt to criminalize the nonreporting and disposal of viable fetal remains could be made. Separately, Kentucky has a statute that prohibits 'concealing [a] birth' to 'prevent a determination of whether it was born dead or alive.'"
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In Blow to 'Fetal Personhood' Push, Alabamian Serving 18 Years After Stillbirth Gets New Trial
"I'm hopeful that my new trial will end with me being freed, because I simply lost my pregnancy at home because of an infection," said Brooke Shoemaker, who has already spent five years in prison.
Dec 30, 2025
While Brooke Shoemaker and a rights group representing her in court are celebrating this week after an Alabama judge threw out her conviction and ordered a new trial, her case is also drawing attention to the dangers of "fetal personhood" policies.
"Laws and judicial decisions that grant fetuses—and in some cases embryos and fertilized eggs—the same legal rights and status given to born people, such as the right to life, is 'fetal personhood,'" explains the website of the group, Pregnancy Justice. "When fetuses have rights, this fundamentally changes the legal rights and status of all pregnant people, opening the door to criminalization, surveillance, and obstetric violence."
Since the US Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling ended the federal right to abortion in 2022, far-right activists and politicians have ramped up their fight for fetal personhood policies. Pregnancy Justice found that in the two years after the decision, the number of people who faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies hit its highest level in US history.
Shoemaker's case began even earlier, in 2017, when she experienced a stillbirth at home about 24-26 weeks into her pregnancy. Paramedics brought her to a hospital, where she disclosed using methamphetamine while pregnant. Although a medical examiner could not determine whether the drug use caused the stillbirth—and, according to Pregnancy Justice, "her placenta showed clear signs of infection"—a jury found her guilty of chemical endangerment of a minor. She's served five years of her 18-year sentence.
"After becoming Ms. Shoemaker's counsel in 2024, Pregnancy Justice filed a petition alongside Andrew Stanley of the Samford Law Office requesting a hearing based on new evidence about the infection that led to the demise of Ms. Shoemaker's pregnancy, leading the judge to agree with Pregnancy Justice's medical witness and to vacate the conviction," the rights group said in a Monday statement.
Lee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Tickal wrote in his December 22 order that "should the facts had been known, and brought before the jury, the results probably would have been different."
Shoemaker said Monday that "after years of fighting, I'm thankful that I'm finally being heard, and I pray that my next Christmas will be spent at home with my children and parents... I'm hopeful that my new trial will end with me being freed, because I simply lost my pregnancy at home because of an infection. I loved and wanted my baby, and I never deserved this."
Although Tickal's decision came three days before Christmas, the 45-year-old mother of four remained behind bars for the holiday last week, as the state appeals.
"While we are thrilled with the judge's decision, we are outraged that Ms. Shoemaker is still behind bars when she should have been home for Christmas," said former Pregnancy Justice senior staff attorney Emma Roth. "She was convicted based on feelings, not facts. Pregnancy Justice will continue to fight on appeal and prove that pregnancies end tragically for reasons far beyond a mother's control. Women like Ms. Shoemaker should be allowed to grieve their loss without fearing arrest."
AL.com reported Tuesday that "Alabama is unique in that it is one of only three states, along with Oklahoma and South Carolina, where the state Supreme Court allows the application of criminal laws meant to punish child abuse or child endangerment to be applied in the context of pregnancy."
However, similar cases aren't restricted to those states. Pregnancy Justice found that in the two years following Dobbs, "prosecutors initiated cases in 16 states: Alabama, California, Florida, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. While prosecutions were brought in all of these states, to date, the majority of the reported cases occurred in Alabama (192) and Oklahoma (112)."
This is fantastic news!!I wrote in my book how the medical examiner ruled the cause of the stillbirth "undetermined," but the coroner (who lacks medical training) instead listed cause of stillbirth as mom's meth usage on the fetal death certificate.
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— Jill Wieber Lens (@jillwieberlens.bsky.social) December 30, 2025 at 12:25 PM
"Prosecutors used a variety of criminal statutes to charge the defendants in these cases, often bringing more than one charge against an individual defendant," the group's report continues. "In total, the 412 defendants faced 441 charges for conduct related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. The majority of charges (398/441) asserted some form of child abuse, neglect, or endangerment."
"As has been the case for decades, nearly all the cases alleged that the pregnant person used a substance during pregnancy," the report adds. "In 268 cases, substance use was the only allegation made against the pregnant person. In the midst of a wide-ranging crisis in maternal healthcare and despite maternal healthcare deserts across the country, prosecutors or police argued that pregnant people's failure to obtain prenatal care was evidence of a crime. This was the case in 29 of 412 cases."
When the publication was released last year, Pregnancy Justice president Lourdes A. Rivera said in a statement that "the Dobbs decision emboldened prosecutors to develop ever more aggressive strategies to prosecute pregnancy, leading to the most pregnancy-related criminal cases on record."
"This is directly tied to the radical legal doctrine of 'fetal personhood,' which grants full legal rights to an embryo or fetus, turning them into victims of crimes perpetrated by pregnant women," Rivera argued. "To turn the tide on criminalization, we need to separate healthcare from the criminal legal system and to change policy and practices to ensure that pregnant people can safely access the healthcare they need, without fear of criminalization. This report demonstrates that, in post-Dobbs America, being pregnant places people at increased risk, not only of dire health outcomes, but of arrest."
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Thanks to Trump, Criminal Charges Related to Pregnancy Hit All-Time High
"The Dobbs decision emboldened prosecutors to develop ever more aggressive strategies to prosecute pregnancy, leading to the most pregnancy-related criminal cases on record."
Sep 24, 2024
Reproductive justice experts have long warned that the erosion of abortion rights in the U.S. would harm people in a wide range of ways, and a report released Tuesday quantifies some of that harm—namely, the criminalization of pregnancy.
In the report, Pregnancy as a Crime: A Preliminary Report on the First Year After Dobbs, the rights group Pregnancy Justice found that from June 24, 2022—the day the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade—to June 23, 2023, the number of people who faced criminal charges related to their pregnancies rose to its highest level in U.S. history.
At least 210 people were charged with crimes related to pregnancy in the first year after Roe was overturned, with prosecutors accusing them of child endangerment, substance abuse, attempting to end a pregnancy—or even researching abortion—and abuse of a corpse, among other charges. Right-wing lawmakers in 22 states have now banned or severely restricted access to abortion.
According to Pregnancy Justice president Lourdes A. Rivera, "the Dobbs decision emboldened prosecutors to develop ever more aggressive strategies to prosecute pregnancy, leading to the most pregnancy-related criminal cases on record" in a single year.
The rise in pregnancy criminalization "is directly tied to the radical legal doctrine of 'fetal personhood,' which grants full legal rights to an embryo or fetus, turning them into victims of crimes perpetrated by pregnant women," added Rivera.
Roughly half of the cases detailed in Pregnancy as a Crime—104 of them—were reported in Alabama, one of several Republican-controlled states that have so-called "fetal personhood laws."
"Without fetal personhood, pregnancy criminalization could not exist," reads the report.
Prosecutors in Oklahoma filed 68 of the cases, and South Carolina had the third-most charges with 10 pregnant people criminalized.
All three states with the highest numbers of cases have near-total abortion bans and some of the worst maternal and infant mortality rates in the U.S., according to Pregnancy Justice.
"To turn the tide on criminalization, we need to separate healthcare from the criminal legal system and to change policy and practices to ensure that pregnant people can safely access the healthcare they need, without fear of criminalization."
In nearly all of the cases brought against pregnant people, actual harm to a fetus or baby did not have to be proven—prosecutors focused only on the perceived risk that the defendants allegedly exposed their pregnancies to.
For example, all 68 defendants in Oklahoma were charged with child neglect, delinquency, or abuse for testing positive for a substance while pregnant or giving birth.
"Defendants can be found guilty even if the pregnancy results in a healthy child and even when the science does not support the
assumption that a positive drug test proves the fetus was harmed," reads the report.
Such "no harm" prosecutions can result in severe punishment for defendants, said Pregnancy Justice; the Oklahoma residents who were charged face sentences up to life in prison if found guilty, and 93 Alabama defendants who were charged with chemical endangerment of a minor could face up to 10 years in prison.
"These findings strongly suggest that, rather than focusing on fetal harm, these prosecutions seek to control and punish pregnant people," said Pregnancy Justice.
Substance abuse charges—for both legal and illegal substances—were involved in a majority of cases studied by the group, while five cases included allegations regarding abortion care, including an attempt to end a pregnancy or to research the possibility of an abortion.
Twenty-two people were criminalized for experiencing a pregnancy loss, said Pregnancy Justice.
Charging documents included 15 allegations of "lack of prenatal care" and 10 cases in which the defendant failed "to seek help during or after birth." Three people were accused of breastfeeding and placing their infant at risk of drug exposure.
"The allegations in these cases are particularly notable for the way that they criminalize precarious pregnancy and birth and meet healthcare needs with punishment rather than care," reads the report. "It is also noteworthy that several women who appear to have faced serious health conditions, devastating pregnancy losses, and enormous trauma, were met not with offers of care but threatened with punishment for finding themselves in allegedly dangerous situations or allegedly not seeking help quickly enough in traumatic moments. Striking, too, in the midst of a wide-ranging crisis in maternal healthcare, is the condemnation of pregnant people for not accessing prenatal care."
In one case, police charged a woman with abusing her "unborn child" just after they administered Narcan to save her from a drug overdose.
Criminalization of pregnancy, said Pregnancy Justice, "only worsens" the crisis of opioid-related deaths among pregnant people.
Rivera said that "to turn the tide on criminalization, we need to separate healthcare from the criminal legal system and to change policy and practices to ensure that pregnant people can safely access the healthcare they need, without fear of criminalization."
The report was released a day after KFF Health News reported on the story of Amari Marsh, a South Carolina resident who was charged in May of 2023 with "murder/homicide by child abuse," two months after she went into preterm labor and gave birth in her bathroom. Marsh spent 22 days in prison—and faced a potential sentence of 20 years to life—but her charges were ultimately dismissed by a grand jury.
Marsh's case, and other instances of pregnancy criminalization, represent Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's "plan for America," said Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) on Tuesday. Trump has boasted about his hand in ensuring Roe v. Wade was overturned and spread misinformation about abortion rights, including the demonstrably false claim that Democrats support "an execution of a baby after birth."
The Dobbs decision, made possible by Trump's appointment of right-wing Supreme Court justices, paved the way for "increased suspicion and surveillance of pregnant people," said Wendy Bach, principal investigator of the report and a professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law. "With this report, we hope to see both more attention on pregnancy-related prosecutions and more advocacy to reverse course on the criminalization of pregnant people."
Correction: This article has been adjusted from its original to more accurately reflect context surrounding a comment from Pregnancy Justice president Lourdes A. Rivera.
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