For the second time since the start of the year, police have charged a Kentucky woman with homicide, abuse of a corpse, and concealing a birth after a pregnancy loss.
On Monday, Kentucky State Police arrested a Booneville woman and her husband over a miscarriage. This follows the January arrest of a Campton woman who allegedly used abortion pills. Autonomy News is not naming any of the parties involved in either case.
According to a police press release, the couple arrested this week went to the hospital for a possible miscarriage in November 2024, and someone called 911 about the incident. While at the hospital, the couple reportedly told police the fetus was still at their house. Police went to the property, found the fetus, and a coroner pronounced it dead.
State police said that a grand jury indicted the couple in late January for concealing the birth of an infant and reckless homicide, a charge used in situations where someone “reckless[ly] causes the death of another person.” The woman also faces charges of tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse.
The medical examiner’s office did an autopsy of the fetus before the couple was indicted, but the state has not specified the cause or manner of death, or the estimated gestational age. Autonomy News requested a copy of the autopsy report from the medical examiner’s office, but they declined to share it.
Gestational age could be especially relevant in this case because, as the organization Pregnancy Justice explained in a recent report, the Kentucky Supreme Court has held that a viable fetus is a human being for purposes of the penal code. Kentucky also prohibits concealing a birth to “prevent a determination of whether it was born dead or alive.” If this fetus wasn’t developed enough that it could possibly have survived, that fact could undermine the state’s charge of reckless homicide, because the fetus is not legally a person. If the state claims the fetus could have been viable based on age, viability is medically different for every pregnancy. Even some full-term pregnancies will never be viable, or result in stillbirths.
In response to Autonomy News’ request for the autopsy report, a spokesperson from the medical examiner’s office said, “Until the judicial process is complete, the premature disclosure of information would reveal investigatory leads, potentially hindering future investigative steps. Additionally, it could pose a significant risk of causing jurors to develop preconceived opinions about this incident before they are presented with all relevant evidence.” The person encouraged us to submit open records requests.
However, in press releases, police refer to the fetus as “an infant,” which has led local and national news outlets to use the word “baby.” Such language is arguably just as much of a risk to potential jurors’ opinions.
Autonomy News asked the medical examiner's office if it could share the estimated gestational age of the fetus in lieu of the full autopsy report, but did not hear back by publication time. We have filed an open records request.
Garnet Henderson
Pregnancy criminalization is sadly common, and this is the second high-profile Kentucky case less than two months into 2026. Previously, state police arrested a woman in Campton on New Year’s Day after she allegedly took abortion pills at home and buried fetal remains in her yard. Police only found out about the abortion because she disclosed it to workers at a primary care clinic, who then called the cops on her.
A 2025 Pregnancy Justice report found that, among 412 pregnancy criminalization cases identified after the fall of Roe v. Wade, 264 involved information obtained or disclosed in a medical setting. Thanks to a gaping loophole in the healthcare privacy law HIPAA, it’s not a violation for a healthcare worker to report a patient to the police if they believe a crime was committed.
The Campton woman was initially charged with fetal homicide, even though Kentucky’s fetal homicide statute contains an explicit exception for people who end their own pregnancies. Prosecutors dropped that wrongful charge but indicted her on three others: Tampering with evidence, abuse of a corpse, and concealing the birth of an infant—the same charges Owsley County prosecutors would use against the second woman weeks later.
Both of these arrests happened in Eastern Kentucky, and all three defendants are white. The Booneville couple is being held at the same jail the first woman was: Three Forks Regional Jail. Booneville is in Owsley County, one of the 10 poorest in the United States; people criminalized for pregnancy outcomes disproportionately live on low incomes. The couple was still incarcerated as of Friday night and their arraignment isn’t until March 2.
While abortion is banned in Kentucky, it’s not illegal to self-manage your own abortion or to have a miscarriage. In fact, only one state, Nevada, explicitly criminalizes self-managed abortion, and only after 24 weeks. But prosecutors are increasingly using charges meant for other purposes to criminalize pregnancy loss.
Pregnancy Justice recently identified at least 58 prosecutions related to how people navigated the aftermath of pregnancy loss between 2006 and 2024—a figure it believes is an undercount. Criminal charges often stem from a person’s handling of remains after a miscarriage or stillbirth, such as when someone miscarries on a toilet or buries remains.
As the report notes, the crime of “concealing a birth” dates back to the late 1600s as a way to criminalize unmarried women based on assumptions that they would hide their pregnancies and potentially murder their newborns, since having a child out of wedlock was heavily stigmatized at that time. Statutes banning “abuse of a corpse” were originally intended to punish grave robbing and necrophilia, per the report.
Unfortunately, weaponizing laws against people experiencing pregnancy loss happens even in states where abortion is legal. The Pregnancy Justice report categorized more than 30 states as being “punitive” for pregnancy loss.
For instance, a Pennsylvania mother and daughter were charged in June 2025 with concealing the death of a child and the daughter was charged with abuse of a corpse after they allegedly buried a nonviable fetus in their backyard following the daughter’s medication abortion. Abortion is legal in the state until 24 weeks of pregnancy.
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.
This story was edited and fact checked by Garnet Henderson.
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