Good News, Bad News, and Bizarre News

9.3.25

Click to skip ahead: In Better News, a positive development in a Minnesota lawsuit. Policing Pregnancy has the latest on the Kentucky college student arrested for ‘abuse of a corpse’. All About Texas has an update in the ‘coerced’ abortion lawsuit being weaponized by Republicans. A Reminder about the GOP and domestic violence. And in Do Something, one small way you can help.

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In Better News

Let’s start with something positive for a change! A lawsuit seeking to nullify abortion protections in Minnesota has been dismissed after a federal judge ruled that the suit lacked standing.

Minnesota is one of the most pro-choice states in the country, so it’s no surprise that anti-abortion organizations were eager to target it. Last year, the Women's Life Care Center and National Institute of Family and Life Advocates claimed that the state’s abortion laws don’t fully inform women about abortion, and that the policies do away with parental rights.

But a federal court dismissed the suit because the groups didn’t specify which laws they were challenging—despite the court asking—and because the groups couldn’t show that they suffered any sort of injury as a result of Minnesota’s abortion protections.

In a moment when good news feels rare, let’s take a minute to enjoy this one.

Policing Pregnancy

Prepare for a little whiplash as we move on to a terrible story that’s still unfolding: The Kentucky college student charged with abuse of a corpse has had her arrest go massively viral over the past 24 hours. That’s in large part because the online “True Crime” community has glommed onto Laken Snelling’s story: they’re combing through her Instagram and TikTok accounts, smearing her under the guise of trying to find ‘evidence’.

Honestly, it’s disgusting to watch—and has definitely left me with a little less faith in humanity. I’ve been shocked not just at the videos made about Snelling, but the grotesque comments—many from women. They’re slamming her for showing up to court “in full glam” (aka wearing make-up), and for wearing a “bright red dress.” People have even found a post where the Kentucky student wrote that being a mother was one of her life-goals; they’re attacking her for that, too.

As I noted on TikTok and Instagram earlier today, I wish people understood that they were making it so much easier for conservatives to stigmatize and criminalize women for their pregnancy outcomes. Especially the women engaging in this kind of bullying behavior: they want to divide us. I don’t understand why they can’t see that.

As we reported yesterday—we don’t really know what happened in this case. The only information we have is from Kentucky police, who claim that Snelling gave birth to an “infant” that was found dead in her closet. But you can’t really trust what law enforcement says about these cases: it was just this summer that Abortion, Every Day uncovered that a South Carolina woman arrested for supposedly “dumping” her “stillborn baby,” had actually suffered a miscarriage.

Still, despite the lack of information available, news outlets (many that should know better) have been echoing police language.

Regardless of what happened, this is a young person who deserved compassion and medical care—not criminalization.

Speaking of ghouls taking advantage of a person’s trauma: Students for Life is using Snelling’s arrest as a way to lobby against abortion medication. Without evidence, the radical anti-abortion and anti-contraception organization is insinuating that Snelling may have used abortion medication. They write, “we hope that police are looking into whether illegal Chemical Abortion Pill Trafficking is part of this story,” and that “it’s worth investigating whether Chemical Abortion Pill pushers got involved.”

A Kentucky College Student's Arrest Has the Media Parroting Police Talking Points

A quick update: As we were getting ready to hit send on tonight’s newsletter, local media in Kentucky reported that the Fayette County Coroner released an initial report. As far as we can tell, however, the ‘report’ is really a statement from County Coroner Gary W. Ginn, who says that their findings are “inconclusive” and that the “investigation remains open” pending more thorough studies.

What’s notable to me is that while Ginn releases the fact that “Infant Snelling” is male, his office does not relay whether or not this was a full term pregnancy. There’s nothing about gestation, and under “age,” Ginn simply writes: 0.

I hope to have more for you soon.

All About Texas

You better buckle up, because I don’t think you’re fully prepared for the story I’m about to share. You probably know by now that Texas is on the brink of passing yet another abortion ban—a law that would allow citizens to sue over abortion pills and make a cash-grab for anti-abortion organizations in the process. (For background on the legislation, read here and here.)

Now, one of the reasons this legislation was pushed through so quickly was because of a well-publicized ‘coerced abortion’ case brought by Jonathan Mitchell: the anti-abortion attorney is representing a Texas woman, Liana Davis, who says that she was slipped abortion medication by her boyfriend. Their wrongful death suit targets the man she says gave her the pills without her consent, Christopher Cooprider, along with Aid Access—the group that shipped the pills—and its founder Rebecca Gomperts.

As Abortion, Every Day pointed out when we first covered the suit, Mitchell hopes suits like these will push the Comstock Act through the courts and make it illegal for providers to ship abortion pills. Mitchell also announced the suit just prior to a Texas Senate State Affairs Committee hearing on the before-mentioned shitty legislation—because he wanted Republicans to be able to point to a ‘coercion’ case to justify passing yet another anti-abortion law.

But today, Cooprider responded to the allegations by countersuing Davis for over ONE BILLION DOLLARS, claiming that she fabricated the allegations against him. In fact, the Texas Marine claims that Davis asked him to order the abortion pills for her, knowing that she wasn’t pregnant (at that time), and that she planned to frame him for poisoning her.

There’s no way to capture all of the truly bizarre claims in this suit, so here are some highlights: Cooprider says that Davis lied about being pregnant in early February, asked him to order abortion pills for her, and faked taking them a few weeks later. It was around that time, he says, that she asked a neighbor for help breaking into Cooprider’s car so she could plant a few of the pills in his vehicle.

It was also around this time in February, the countersuit claims, that Davis ordered ovulation strips from Amazon so she could actually get Cooprider to impregnate her—which did end up happening. After telling him that she was pregnant again, Cooprider became concerned about her “erratic behavior,” which included—he says—calling him up to fifty-three times in a single day, screaming outside of his home and threatening to accuse him of sexual assault, and faking a miscarriage.

It was then that Cooprider became so alarmed that he called 911: call transcripts show that he discussed getting a restraining order and said, “I just wanna do everything I can right now to protect myself from her lying and doing stuff like that.” On that call, Cooprider also predicted Davis’ future allegations, saying, “she's also threatening she's saying that I coerced her into taking the abortion pills against her will.”

A few weeks later, Davis went to the hospital, claiming that Cooprider had drugged her. She did lose her pregnancy that evening, but it’s unclear how—Cooprider claims that it’s because she played it fast and loose with her health, Davis says it’s because she was secretly given abortion pills.

I want to be clear: We don’t know what happened here. Cooprider has evidence of his claims, but Davis also provides evidence in her initial suit. What we do know is that Mitchell has a history of representing unsavory characters in his mission to ban abortion—most notably controlling men who sue over their partners’ abortions.

In 2023, for example, he represented Marcus Silva, a man who sued his ex wife’s three friends who helped her obtain abortion pills. It came out in a countersuit that Silva was emotionally abusive and wielded the legal system to extort and terrorize his ex: he tried to use the case to blackmail her into resuming a sexual relationship with him, and threatened to share intimate photos and videos of her on the internet.

All of which is to say: Mitchell is known for bringing salacious, misleading lawsuits with the goal of banning abortion pills. And these new allegations throw everything about this case into doubt—on the very same day that Texas Republicans could issue a final vote for HB 7.

That’s right, the legislation just needs one more final vote before it heads to the governor to be signed—and lawmakers could issue it tonight. We’ll keep you updated as we find out more, but whew.

A Reminder

Given how often ‘coerced’ abortion is coming up these days, we just wanted to remind folks that all data shows that it’s abortion bans—not access—that carry the greatest harm for abuse victims. The Turnaway Study has long shown that those denied abortion are at greater risk of long-term domestic violence, and we know that abusers will sometimes wield forced pregnancy to entrap their victims.

In the first year after Dobbs, calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline involving reproductive coercion doubled, with more women reporting that their partners threatened to call police or sue them over abortions.

Republicans don’t care about ‘coercion’, they’re just trying to feign as much in order to restrict reproductive health access. As Aid Access’ Rebecca Gomperts told AED last month, “Anti-abortion groups are using people in tragic situations, vulnerable situations, and weaponizing them for their political aims, and that is disgusting.”

Do Something

You all probably remember the South Carolina woman arrested for “desecration of human remains” after miscarrying. (This was the case where the cops tried to make it out like she had a stillborn baby rather than an 18-week miscarriage.) You also might remember that the incredible Palmetto State Abortion Fund raised money to bail her out of jail.

Well, now they’re asking for our help again!

The abortion fund has increased their fundraising goal: they want to place the woman—again, who was arrested for her miscarriage—in an outpatient mental health program, and to help her with transitional living costs. So if you can swing it, consider donating generously.