Kentucky Coroner: When We Say 'Infant', It Could Mean 'Fetus'

Lexington law enforcement knows whether Laken Snelling's pregnancy was full-term—they just won't say

A telling update in the arrest of Laken Snelling, the 21-year-old Kentucky college student charged with ‘abuse of a corpse’ after police say they found an “infant” in her closet: The county coroner investigating the case declined to answer whether the young woman’s pregnancy was, in fact, full-term, and noted that when their office refers to an “infant,” they might actually be talking about a fetus.

Snelling’s arrest has drawn widespread, national attention, and numerous media outlets and viral true crime influencers have uncritically repeated police language connecting Snelling to the death of an “infant.” In fact, that’s the exact term used by police, the Fayette County coroner, and mainstream publications covering the case: infant.

But as AED warned when this story first broke, police are known to use inflammatory terms like “infant” or “baby,” sometimes when arresting someone who has simply miscarried. (This just happened in South Carolina.)

In this particular case, it looks like we had good reason to be cautious. On Thursday, AED spoke to the Fayette County coroner and asked whether the coroner’s office and police department know whether the case involved a full-term live birth, stillbirth, whether the pregnancy had been viable, and the gestation of Snelling’s pregnancy. County coroner Gary Ginn told us, “We've determined all of that,” but that they won’t be sharing the information.

“We do have an approximate age of the infant, but that's part of the investigation, and we're not releasing that at this time.”

What’s more, according to Ginn, Fayette County’s Child Fatality Review Committee uses the term ‘infant’ broadly—including for fetuses:

“When we're talking about ‘infants,’ [that could be] from zero to one years old, or one year old to a small child. A lot of times we'll use the broad term of infant, we could be referring to a fetus, or we could be referring to a full-term, or we could be referring to a child that's not walking, or a child that might even be walking, because all of them are considered infants. When we're using broad terms, that's typically the language that I use. … I'm not defining that medically and legally in saying that.”

In short? When local police and the coroner’s office say they found an ‘infant’ in Snelling’s closet, it’s entirely possible they’re referring to a miscarried or stillborn fetus.

Meanwhile, far and wide, media outlets and influencers have been reporting on this case as if we already know that Snelling’s ‘infant’ was, indeed, a full-term baby. But county officials themselves won’t confirm that’s the case—which raises significant questions about the young woman’s arrest, and the intense vilification of Snelling in the media and online.

To be clear: regardless of the circumstances surrounding Snelling’s pregnancy or how far along she was, she deserved compassion and medical care—not criminalization. We’ve also seen women face prison time over home births and complications that their newborns didn’t survive. In all of these cases, the fact remains that pregnancy outcomes should not be under the purview of police.

And whatever we end up finding out about Snelling’s pregnancy, no one—not journalists, tabloids, certainly not social media users—should be rushing to conclusions or uncritically trusting the word of law enforcement.

What’s striking is that when speaking to the coroner’s office, it appeared they hadn’t yet been confronted by these very basic questions: what an ‘infant’ is, the gestation and age of the ‘infant,’ and even whether this case involves a live or stillbirth. This is exactly why informed reporting on a topic as complex and often wildly misunderstood as pregnancy-related criminalization is so essential.

AED also reached out to the Lexington Police Department. They informed us this criminal investigation remains ongoing and couldn’t share more than the press release on Snelling’s arrest that’s already public. And Ginn would not specify when, if ever, any of this information will be made public.

Until then, we’re stuck watching a young woman’s name smeared across newspapers and social media, as local officials decline to provide the most basic information.

As Megan Hill, litigation counsel at the reproductive justice legal organization If/When/How, told AED on Tuesday, “My clients’ lives have been turned upside down because of inflammatory stigmatizing reporting.”

She added:

“It’s essential that as people become more aware of reproductive criminalization…we also learn to question how police and prosecutors rely on the media to stigmatize and punish the people they are criminalizing."

For more on Snelling’s case, read AED’s coverage below:

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