Ohio Police Are Investigating a Miscarriage
5.23.25
Click to skip ahead: Budget Breakdown tells you what you need to know about how the GOP bill will impact repro rights and health. Policing Pregnancy reports that Ohio cops are investigating a miscarriage, and UK police are taking a page from the USA pregnancy criminalization handbook. In Attacks on Abortion Pills, the FDA chief dropped an anti-abortion messaging hint. In the States, news from Wisconsin, Virginia, Idaho, Arizona, Illinois, and more. Finally, Anti-Abortion Glossary takes on ‘restorative reproductive medicine.’
Budget Breakdown
By now, I’m sure you’ve seen that the House of Representatives passed Donald Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’—a budget package that could have been lifted directly from the pages of Project 2025. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the coverage (I certainly am) here’s the bottom line:
Republicans are trying to stop low-income Americans from going to Planned Parenthood. They’re calling it ‘defunding’, claiming they don’t want tax dollars going to abortion. But that’s already the law—federal funding doesn’t cover abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening pregnancy.
What is covered? Basic healthcare. Medicaid reimburses Planned Parenthood—just like any other healthcare provider—when patients go in for birth control, STI testing, cancer screenings, and routine check-ups. But because the organization also provides abortions, Republicans want to cut off those reimbursements entirely.
The impact would be catastrophic. If this passes, hundreds of health centers could close and millions of patients—many of whom have nowhere else to go. We’re talking about ending pap smears, cancer screenings, contraception, etc., for the people who need them most.
This is the Project 2025 playbook in action—just like when Trump gutted Title X. And once again, Republicans are ignoring the fact that Planned Parenthood is wildly popular: the group is better liked than either political party and Donald Trump.
As Planned Parenthood president Alexis McGill Johnson put it: “‘Defunding’ Planned Parenthood is as unpopular as it is dangerous—but House Republicans don’t care what the American people want, or whether they can get basic health services.”
Policing Pregnancy
It was just a few days ago that I told you about a Texas woman who spent nearly five months in jail after being arrested for her miscarriage. Today, a reader alerted me to yet another miscarriage investigation, this time in Ohio.
Apparently someone reported pregnancy remains found in a trash bin outside a Toledo apartment complex—and instead of recognizing it as a private medical loss, police opened an investigation. Sound familiar? It should! It’s near-identical to how a Georgia woman ended up arrested for her miscarriage.
And like the other criminalization cases we’ve been tracking—this one followed the same disturbing pattern.
First come the lurid—and false—headlines. Local Ohio papers ran stories this week declaring that a “baby” or “infant” was “found dead,” and that “the circumstances surrounding the baby's death were unknown.” To most readers, it would sound like a murdered newborn. Even after it became clear this was a miscarriage, reporters kept calling the fetus “an infant.”
While the media coverage was horrific, the real question is why Ohio police are investigating a miscarriage at all!
Remember, there are no laws about how to dispose of a miscarriage—nor should there be. And even if authorities suspected this was an abortion, Ohio law bars the prosecution of patients. So there was no reason for police to be involved.
Still, they opened a case, treated this like a potential crime scene, and even sent the remains of this miscarriage for an autopsy.
At least the Lucas County coroner got the language right in the release about their findings release:
“Products of conception were recovered from a dumpster at an apartment complex…The products of conception were evaluated and determined to be at an early stage of development and nonviable.”
In other words, the state spent a whole lot of time, energy and money investigating someone’s miscarriage. And while I’m hoping this means the county has closed the case, we know what happens if they continue “investigating.” Just ask Brittany Watts in Ohio, Selena Maria Chandler-Scott in Georgia, Mallori Patrice Strait in Texas, or countless others.
These stories aren’t the only reason I’ve been thinking so much about criminalization lately. I’ve been watching this UK story for the past few days with a pit in my stomach. British police are being instructed on how to search women’s homes for abortion medication, comb through their period tracking apps, and bypass court orders to get women’s medical records and internet search histories.
New guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) on ‘child death investigation’ advises officers to search for “drugs that can terminate pregnancy’ in cases involving stillbirths. The NPCC…also suggests a woman’s digital devices could be seized to help investigators ‘establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy’. That could include checking a woman’s internet searches, messages to friends and family, and health apps, ‘such as menstrual cycle and fertility trackers’, it states.”
It’s no surprise that there’s been an increase in pregnancy-related arrests in the UK, and that abortion providers report getting hundreds of police requests for patient data.
And Kylie Cheung at Jezebel points out that just like in the U.S., these cases are often launched under the guise of investigating “child death”—language that sounds eerily similar to how American law enforcement uses charges like “abuse of a corpse” to police pregnancy.
Speaking of language similarities: On Tuesday, I flagged how dangerous it is that American anti-abortion activists and legislators want to redefine abortion as an “intention” rather than a medical intervention:
“If someone has a stillbirth but did a Google search for abortion clinics when they first got that pregnancy test back—could that spark an investigation into whether or not a patient caused their pregnancy loss?”
Lo and behold, this new UK guidance instructs police how to look at women’s internet searches and text messages to “establish a woman’s knowledge and intention in relation to the pregnancy.”
What we need right now is for Democrats to introduce legislation banning the use of state resources to investigate pregnancy outcomes. If Republicans are serious when they say they don’t want to prosecute women, they should have no problem! And for Democrats, it’s a chance to lead proactively.
Attacks on Abortion Pills
Well this is interesting: While being grilled by Sen. Patty Murray at a Senate committee hearing yesterday, FDA chief Marty Makary may have tipped the anti-abortion movement’s hand when it comes to messaging around their junk science mifepristone study.
A quick refresher: The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) claims that 1 in 10 people who take mifepristone experience “serious adverse events.” But the study is riddled with problems: it’s not peer-reviewed, the methodology is a mess, and it was clearly engineered by this conservative think tank to give the Trump administration an excuse to restrict abortion pills. (More background here, here, and here.)
In fact, Abortion, Every Day uncovered videos this week showing that the EPPC coordinated the study’s release with major anti-abortion groups. EPPC president Ryan Anderson even admitted the goal was to “eliminate” abortion medication. So much for objective science!
That’s why Makary’s comments yesterday caught my attention. Check out his exchange with Sen. Murray:
Makary says to Murray, “neither of us have seen the study, the data, or the underlying methodology.”
That’s telling. He’s referring to the fact that EPPC has refused to release the dataset behind their claims. All they’ll say is that they purchased access to a private health insurance database and—conveniently—can’t share it. As The Washington Post fact-checker pointed out, that’s wildly out of step with normal research practices.
Makary is leaning on that omission to deflect criticism and make it seem like Democrats are jumping to conclusions without all the facts. But this wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment dodge. He used the same talking point in an earlier (friendlier) exchange with Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, claiming he had only viewed the “top line results” of the study.
“The underlying dataset is not available, but when it does become available, we will take a hard look,” Makary said.
It’s a clever strategy: Claiming he hasn’t really seen the study allows Makary to sidestep the obvious criticisms while keeping the door open to use the ‘research’ down the line. (Once it’s more politically convenient.)
But here’s the thing: the EPPC has given no indication that they plan to release the dataset at all! So it’s clear that this is the new game plan: Tell Democrats and pro-choice groups that they can’t critique the research because they haven’t seen the data—while making sure no one ever sees the data.
And that raises the real question: If the study is too incomplete to criticize, how can it possibly be complete enough to justify overturning decades of safe, legal abortion medication?
It’s a good time to order abortion medication to have in your medicine cabinet just in case: Aid Access, Plan C Pills, Abortion Finder, I Need An A.
In the States
Do these guys ever take a break from being assholes? At the Wisconsin GOP convention this week, Republicans passed a resolution calling on the state to enforce an 1849 law they say bans abortion. At least they’re being honest: they want to drag women all the way back into the 1800s.
You may remember that after Roe was overturned, Wisconsin revived that old-ass law as an abortion ban—preventing doctors from providing care. But in the summer of 2023, a judge ruled that the law isn’t actually an abortion ban—but “a feticide statute.” (Meaning it only applies to an attack on a pregnant person that ends their pregnancy, not abortion.)
That decision allowed clinics to reopen, even though anti-abortion groups still insist the law stands as a total ban. Now that very issue is in front of the Wisconsin Supreme Court—one more reason why getting a pro-choice judge on the bench last month was so critical.
(See why I track this stuff? Who can remember all of this?!)
Meanwhile, Virginia’s Republican nominee for governor refuses to say whether she’d sign an abortion ban. In an interview with 8News, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears dodged abortion questions like a pro—pulling out every anti-choice pivot in the book.
Parental rights panic? ✅
Accusations of abortion "trafficking"? ✅
"Post-birth abortion"? ✅
First, she claimed her opponent, Democrat Abigail Spanberger, would allow kids to get out-of-state abortions without parental permission:
“I am the parent. I am always my child’s parent, and how dare any lawmaker, any politician get between me and my child?”
Then she parroted Trump’s vile ‘post-birth’ abortion lie:
“What is my opponent’s limit? Because an anything-goes, where you can have an abortion up until the time the child can be born—and afterwards, what happens to the baby after an abortion?”
All that spinning to avoid one simple question: Would she sign a 15-week abortion ban?
That evasion is the answer.
Idaho Republicans rolled their eyes this week—literally—as an OBGYN testified about how terrified doctors are to perform life-saving abortions under the state’s ban.
Dr. Jennifer Cook spoke on a legislative panel about the crisis Idaho is facing: Thanks to the ban, it’s near-impossible to retain and recruit OBGYNs. The Idaho Capital Sun reports that as she told lawmakers about a 19-week pregnant patient who couldn’t get care until she was on the brink of death, one Republican legislator interrupted to say, “That’s not true.”
Dr. Cook later had to pause her presentation to call them out: “I can see some eyes rolling… I can see you all rolling your eyes.”
Lauren Necochea, chair of the Idaho Democratic Party, called the moment “a window into how the Republican supermajority governs: with disregard for the harm they cause and no intention of changing course.”
Idaho has lost nearly a quarter of its OBGYNs since Roe was overturned, and the state fought all the way to the Supreme Court for the right to deny women live-saving abortions. When faced with the fact that hospitals were having to life-flight women out-of-state for abortions, Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador insisted that doctors were lying and just trying “to make a political statement.”
In better news...
Arizona reproductive rights groups are back in court—this time to strike down the state’s 24-hour waiting period, its ban on telehealth abortion, and other onerous and medically unnecessary hurdles.
The lawsuit, filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the ACLU on behalf of abortion providers, argues that these restrictions violate the state’s new constitutional protections. After all, Arizona voters passed a pro-choice ballot measure in November—so laws that delay or deny care are no longer just harmful, they’re unconstitutional.
As Dr. William Richardson, one of the plaintiffs, put it:
“These restrictions are an insult to patients and only push care out of reach—especially for those in rural, low-income, and marginalized communities.”
In other words: the people most affected are already facing the steepest barriers. And instead of protecting health, these laws are just punishing patients for needing care. I’ll keep you updated as the suit moves forward.
Finally, Illinois Democrats just proposed legislation that would classify attacks on reproductive health care clinics as terrorism. HB2679 adds this to the definition of terrorism in the state’s criminal code:
“[A]ny act that is intended to cause or create and does cause or create substantial damage to or destruction of any building or facility containing an entity providing reproductive health care as the term is defined in the Reproductive Health Act.”
With the Trump Department of Justice refusing to enforce the FACE Act—the federal law that protects abortion clinics—it’s a terrific move, and I hope more states follow suit.
Quick hits:
The new Florida ballot measure rules—designed to make it nearly impossible to put issues like abortion in front of voters—are being challenged in court;
A new study shows that mental distress spiked among Texas women of reproductive-age after the state passed an abortion ban;
And New England Planned Parenthood leaders write in The Boston Globe that the group is at risk, even in the pro-choice states they serve.
Anti-Abortion Glossary
We all know anti-abortion legislators and activists oppose IVF—but they can’t say that out loud. Fertility treatments are way too popular for conservatives to attack outright.
So they’re doing what they always do: finding a sneaky way to get what they want while pretending it’s in women’s best interest. First came the push for “health and safety standards” for IVF clinics—regulations that sound reasonable on the surface but are actually designed to burden fertility doctors and limit access. (Think TRAP laws, but for IVF.)
But conservatives know they can’t just limit access to fertility treatments when so many people are desperate to have children—they need to offer an alternative.
Enter restorative reproductive medicine—a scientific-sounding term that anti-abortion activists are using to disguise their opposition to IVF. Elisha Brown at States Newsroom has a great deep dive on this, but here’s the short version: RRM is based on the idea that women don’t really need IVF—they just need to fix the “root causes” of their infertility, like nutrition and hormone imbalances.
If it sounds like MAHA-grade bullshit, that’s because it is. A quick Google search turns up sites like “Natural Womanhood,” buzzwords like “toxins” and “femininity,” and endorsements from the Heritage Foundation and the EPPC (yes, the same group behind the fake mifepristone study).
Sean Tipton of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine puts it plainly:
“It’s a political term backed by political groups that has nothing to do with medicine. When you look at the details, it sounds a lot like what our clinicians would refer to as the diagnostic workup for infertility patients, but make no mistake, this is a term that is pushed by groups who oppose IVF.”
And those groups are very connected to the White House. Just look at the Heritage Foundation’s go-to expert on RRM: Emma Waters. You might remember her from that New York Times piece about the Trump administration’s efforts to boost the birthrate.
Waters told the Times, “We need to channel the MAHA spirit and really dive deep into infertility” and insisted “the solution is not to push IVF for everyone.” She’s also the policy analyst who wants government-run “natural fertility” classes—complete with period-tracking lessons for high school girls. 🙃🙃🙃
It gets even weirder:
Many of the anti-abortion activists pushing RRM are also behind the effort to test states’ wastewater for abortion pills and birth control. Remember when Kristi Hamrick of Students for Life said we’re drinking abortions every day? (Who could forget?!) She also claimed abortion medication in the water could be making women infertile.
Make no mistake: this is all connected. RRM isn’t about helping people get pregnant—it’s about masking anti-abortion and anti-IVF extremism, and rerouting support away from evidence-based fertility care and into conservative pseudoscience.
So remember the term: restorative reproductive medicine. If you hear lawmakers using it, you’ll know what it really means.
Time and time again, we have seen the ways that Black people’s pain and suffering are ignored and dismissed by the very people who are called upon to protect us. And even after death, our harm continues to be consumed as spectacle by the public rather than being met by reverence and grief.”
- Kwajelyn Jackson, Executive Director of Feminist Center for Reproductive Liberation, speaking on Adriana Smith
"Restorative reproductive medicine " goes hand in hand with forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term and then coercing those women into giving their babies up for adoption yo pre-approved Christofascist couples.
Do these guys ever take a break from being assholes? no...