A Kentucky A woman faces multiple criminal charges after she allegedly induced an abortion with drugs.
Kentucky State Police arrested a 35-year-old woman, Melinda Spencer, on charges of first-degree fetal murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with physical evidence. in accordance with local news outlet in Kentucky. Spencer reportedly ordered drugs online to end her pregnancy and then buried the remains of the pregnancy in her backyard.
It's unclear how far along Spencer was in her pregnancy at the time of her alleged abortion, although police described the fetus as “developed,” the Lexington Herald Leader reported. reported.
Spencer was taken to the Beattyville jail. Kentuckyon Thursday, jail records show. She remained in jail as of Friday evening.
Kentucky prohibitions Doctors are prohibited from performing abortions at any time after conception. However, like the vast majority of statesKentucky does not prohibit people from inducing or “self-monitoring” their own abortions. Medical experts also widely agree that self-abortion with the pill in the first trimester of pregnancy is safe.
Ordering abortion pills online is becoming more common after the US Supreme Court overturned the decision. Roe v. Wade and untied wave state abortion bans in 2022. By the end of 2024, one in four abortions was due to providers who consulted patients online and then sent them by mail abortion pills. According to data from the #WeCount research group.
However, women repeatedly faced criminal consequences for pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriages. In the two years since Roe fell, 412 people have been prosecuted for pregnancy-related crimes, researchers from the reproductive justice group Pregnancy Justice reported. found.
Sixteen of these prosecutions involved murder charges, and seven involved what the researchers called “wrongful conduct in relation to birth or death.” It is unclear how many cases may have stemmed from government suspicions that the defendant had an abortion, as only nine cases included charges related to performing, attempting, or researching an abortion.
Abortion rights advocates see efforts to criminalize pregnancy outcomes as part of a sweeping campaign to establish “fetal personhood,” a legal doctrine that gives embryos and fetuses full legal rights and protections—including to the extent that the rights of the fetus may compete with the rights of the woman carrying it.
“The idea that a fetus can be a person and a victim of a crime is widely used in cases of pregnancy loss,” Wendy Bach, a law professor at the University of Tennessee, said Guardian in 2024. “So instead of treating pregnancy loss with care, support and recognition of the often tragic life circumstances that come with it, we greet it with criminal suspicion, criminal investigation and prosecution.”
Police in Georgia one woman was arrested after she was found bleeding and unconscious following a miscarriage. Another womanin Ohio, was arrested after she suffered a miscarriage in the toilet. Both cases were eventually dismissed.
Kentucky police reportedly intervened in Spencer's case after Spencer disclosed her pregnancy to clinic staff. It is often health professionals who inform the police about cases of criminal prosecution for pregnancy outcomes: of the 412 such cases uncovered by Pregnancy Justice, 264 involved information that was disclosed in health care settings.
A person who answered the phone at Kentucky State Police headquarters said no one was available to comment on Spencer's case due to the recent holidays. A prison official said her lawyer advised Spencer not to talk to the media or law enforcement. Spencer's attorney was not immediately available to speak.
