A Kentucky College Student's Arrest Has the Media Parroting Police Talking Points
Reporters need to be a lot more skeptical of cops prosecuting pregnancy cases
Across the country, publications are parroting police language about a Kentucky college student who’s been arrested for abuse of a corpse: NBC News reports that Laken Snelling1 was “hiding a dead baby in [a] closet”, while The Guardian writes that police found a “dead infant.” Local media in Kentucky is using similar language.
But here’s the problem: we don’t know if that’s true. The only information we have comes from the police in a virulently anti-abortion state—yet reporters are uncritically echoing their language as fact, and potentially smearing a young woman’s name in the process.
Here’s what we do know: Since Roe was overturned, there’s been a massive spike in pregnancy-related arrests. We’ve covered quite a few of them here at Abortion, Every Day—like the young woman charged with ‘concealing a death’ in Georgia after placing miscarriage remains in the trash, or the Texas woman jailed for five months after miscarrying in a public restroom. And I know you all remember Brittany Watts in Ohio.
In all of these cases, women’s names and mugshots were splashed across the crime pages, slammed for ‘dumping’ their ‘babies’. Headlines declared that Watts “clogged” her toilet trying to “flush” a newborn. The truth? She miscarried at home in her bathroom. Reporters said the Texas woman “spent hours” trying to flush her “baby girl.” The reality? Another miscarriage.
And just this summer, Abortion, Every Day uncovered that a South Carolina woman accused by local media of using a “plastic bag to dump stillborn baby” had actually miscarried at 18 weeks. She was arrested for desecration of a corpse after seeking help at a local hospital.
Again and again, publications repeated language from police and prosecutors—making it appear that women who had lost their pregnancies had actually killed or callously thrown away their “babies.”
Megan Hill, Litigation Counsel at If/When/How, tells Abortion, Every Day that too often, reporters take police at their word—which is very much what law enforcement hopes will happen. "In most of our cases, police and prosecutors have used the media to create public narratives that demonize and punish people for how their pregnancy ends,” Hill says.
The consequences of that coverage can be devastating:
“My clients have lost their jobs, housing, family, friends, and community as a result of police-driven media narratives. Their lives have been turned upside down because of inflammatory stigmatizing reporting.”
Already, the young woman at the center of this Kentucky case has had her name and picture spread across the internet. Her life has been forever changed.
Now, we don’t know what happened to Laken Snelling. Is it possible that she gave birth to an infant, or had a stillbirth? Of course. But given the reporting I’ve done over these last few years, I’d be surprised if that was the case: her story follows a very familiar pattern of miscarriage arrests—most notably, the abuse of a corpse charges. And, frankly, if a full-term infant had died, Kentucky police would likely be treating this as a murder investigation.
But again, we just don’t know. We need all the facts first, and information from law enforcement in a state that views fertilized eggs as people simply doesn’t cut it.
Reporters need to be a whole lot more skeptical, and to understand that in post-Dobbs America, even using words like ‘babies’ and ‘infants’ means something. Conservatives are already codifying fetal personhood in policy—we don’t need mainstream media outlets helping them do the same in culture.
Kylie and I are working on getting the arrest records, and hope to have more for you soon. But in the meantime, please remember to read coverage of pregnancy-related arrests critically, and to hold media outlets to account whenever you can.
Finally, if you’re able to—please consider supporting Abortion, Every Day with a paid subscription or donation. We’re one of the few places reporting on these stories carefully and accurately, and we rely on readers like you to help us keep going:
To learn more about the rise of pregnancy criminalization, check out Pregnancy Justice. For free legal help as a patient or health practitioner, call If/When/How’s free Repro Helpline: 844-868-2812. Read more on the issue from AED below:
Abortion, Every Day only names someone arrested for their pregnancy outcome if they’ve come forward themselves, or if media coverage is already so widespread that leaving it out would do more harm than good. In Snelling’s case, it’s the latter.
You’re exactly right to underline how the headlines distort reality. What we’re watching is a playbook: prosecutors rush to criminalize pregnancy loss, and the press amplifies it by framing miscarriages as if they were murders.
Here’s the truth behind the spin:
• Pregnancy-related arrests are spiking since Roe’s fall—not because women are committing new “crimes,” but because states gave prosecutors permission to treat ordinary pregnancy outcomes as suspicious.
• Language does the dirty work. Terms like “concealing a death,” “clogging a toilet,” or “dumping a baby” are deliberately chosen to inflame. They erase the medical reality—that these were miscarriages—and replace it with lurid imagery designed to shame.
• The system thrives on spectacle. Mugshots, crime pages, and clickbait headlines serve the same purpose as criminal charges: they turn private loss into public punishment, a warning to others that pregnancy must be policed.
What’s happening in Georgia, Texas, and Ohio isn’t about protecting life—it’s about rewriting miscarriage as crime. And that should terrify anyone who has ever been, or ever could be, pregnant.
It’s fascinating how a reporter’s knowledge of criminal law vanishes the minute the news involves *anything* pertaining to a woman and her body.