Abortion is legal in the state, but the teen was reportedly turned away from a Planned Parenthood that doesn’t provide care to the legal limit of 23 weeks and six days of pregnancy. The case illustrates how people can face criminal charges related to abortion and miscarriage even in states where abortion is legal—as well as in states with bans that nominally exempt pregnant people.
Under police questioning, the daughter reportedly said that her mother purchased abortion pills for her since she was not old enough to buy them herself. The mother bought pills from a pharmacy site called Private Emma, which is not a telemedicine provider run by physicians. The daughter allegedly took the pills in early May 2024 and had a miscarriage. The daughter reportedly texted a friend multiple photos and told the friend that she and her mother planned to bury the fetus. The friend went to the police almost a year later and a coroner’s report estimated that the fetus was 20 weeks and six days gestation.
The coroner said the cause of death was extreme prematurity prior to viability. (Viability, or when a fetus can survive outside the uterus, is different for every pregnancy, but is thought to happen around 24 weeks.) Despite the fetus being nonviable, the pair were still charged with concealing the death of a “child.”
After police exhumed the remains, they obtained text messages between the mother and daughter about the pills. The mother also said she was “paranoid” and wrote “we’re either going to get arrested or I’m gonna get divorced.”
In a press release, the Susquehanna Regional Police called the 20-week fetus a “newborn baby.” One news report echoed that language, referring to the fetus as a “newborn.” The police also called this a “dangerous at-home abortion.” While it’s true that the Food and Drug Administration has only approved abortion pills for use through 10 weeks of pregnancy, the pills can be used safely in the second trimester and Doctors Without Borders has guidelines for using the pills through 22 weeks. The police also said the teen knew “she was too far along in her pregnancy to receive an abortion,” which is not true; she was merely too far along to receive care at one particular clinic.
The mother has a preliminary hearing scheduled for July 2.
Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said that the charges are not for the abortion itself. “I want to be abundantly clear that these defendants are not being charged with performing an abortion—as the law prevents us from doing—but for their actions after the abortion,” she said.
These comments underscore that neither abortion nor self-managed abortion has to be explicitly banned for people to face investigations because police can try to charge them for things like concealing a birth, concealing a death, or tampering with human remains.
Plus, the biggest risk to people’s privacy is other people, not their phones. An August 2022 report from If/When/How found that, in 61 cases where adults were investigated for pregnancy outcomes, 45 percent were reported to law enforcement by care professionals, including doctors, nurses, and social workers. Another 26 percent were reported by friends, parents, or intimate partners. In a 2022 Nebraska case, a teenager’s friend also provided information to police. Still, once police are involved, they can try to access digital communications and internet activity.
While criminalization of abortion and pregnancy loss predates the end of Roe v. Wade, the risks are now even more acute.
People who need assistance self-managing a miscarriage or abortion can call the Miscarriage + Abortion Hotline at (833) 246-2632 for confidential medical support, or the Repro Legal Helpline at (844) 868-2812 for confidential legal information and advice.
