Texas Jailed a Miscarriage Patient for Five Months

5.20.25

Click to skip ahead: In Criminalizing Care, a Texas woman spent five months behind bars for her miscarriage. Language Matters digs into abortion as an ‘intention’. Care Crisis reminds readers that OBGYNs are being forced to travel to Texas for their certifying exams. In the States, news from Maine, Kansas, Missouri, and more. In the Nation, the White House’s bullshit moves on IVF, the attacks on Planned Parenthood, and more.

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Criminalizing Care

I’m sorry to hit you with another nightmare story, but this is important: Texas kept a woman in jail for nearly five months after she miscarried in a public bathroom.

Five. Months.

According to Bexar County court records, Mallori Patrice Strait was arrested for ‘abuse of a corpse’ on December 19, 2024. She was just released last week, after prosecutors dropped the case due to insufficient evidence.

I said this on Friday, but I’ll say it again: We don’t need to imagine a dystopian future where women are being used as incubators and arrested for miscarriages, because that future is already here.

I first wrote about Strait’s story in January, pointing out the similarities to Brittany Watts’ case. Watts was arrested for ‘abuse of a corpse’ in Ohio after she lost her pregnancy at home. Her story was splashed across local crime pages, with lurid headlines declaring that she had “clogged” her toilet trying to “flush” a newborn.

Strait was treated the same way—with sensationalist headlines stating that she “spent hours” trying to flush her “baby girl” down the toilet. They even published her mug shot. If only it ended there.

After a judge set her bond at $100,000, Strait spent the next five months—including her 34th birthday—behind bars. While she was in jail, a local crisis pregnancy center took custody of her fetal remains. They named the fetus, and gave it a public funeral. (I know, nauseating.)

Just days ago, the district attorney finally filed a motion to dismiss. The Bexar County Medical Examiner had determined Strait had miscarried and that her fetus died in utero. The DA’s office said there was “no direct evidence” that Straight tried to flush anything.

So why the fuck was she in jail?

We know why: The people criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes tend to be marginalized—they’re often women of color, low income, immigrants, unhoused, or have substance abuse issues. Black women, in particular, are targeted by law enforcement and hospital staff. (When someone is arrested on pregnancy-related charges, they’re most often turned in by a healthcare provider.)

These prosecutions follow a very predictable pattern, so we know who is most at risk.

But let’s recap for a moment: Texas arrested a woman for a miscarriage, jailed her for nearly half a year, let an anti-abortion group name and bury her fetus—and then quietly dropped the charges once they realized they never had a case to begin with.

As Karen Thompson, legal director of Pregnancy Justice, put it:

"You cannot undo the harms of ignorant law enforcement responses to a miscarriage. You cannot undo the fear Ms. Strait felt. You can't undo the time she lost in jail. You can't undo the trauma. It isn't okay to have to recover from something that never should have happened."

Let’s be clear: This is what abortion bans and fetal personhood laws do.

It’s been less than two months since a Georgia woman was arrested for how she disposed of her miscarriage. Even after public outrage forced the DA to drop the charges, he still threatened her with prosecution, saying, “I do not condone the way the remains were handled.”

But this isn’t just about criminalization. The same fetal personhood used to charge Strait and the young woman in Georgia is also behind the torture of Adriana Smith and her family. These are all the predictable consequences of treating embryos and fetuses like people.

To learn more, read Pregnancy Justice’s “Unpacking Fetal Personhood,” and mark your calendars (6/19) for my livestream conversation with law professor Mary Ziegler, author of Personhood: The New Civil War over Reproduction.

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Language Matters

I told you yesterday that Republicans and anti-abortion groups are desperate to distance themselves from Adriana Smith—the brain dead Georgia woman being kept alive against her family’s wishes because she’s pregnant.

Leading organizations like Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America have tried to ignore Adriana’s story, remaining silent. Others are shirking responsibility by claiming Georgia’s abortion ban doesn’t require the hospital to keep Adriana on life support.

As conservatives spin themselves nauseous, I want to highlight something important in the language those latter groups are using. Take this quote from Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr:

“There is nothing in the LIFE Act that requires medical professionals to keep a woman on life support after brain death. Removing life support is not an action ‘with the purpose to terminate a pregnancy.’” (Emphasis mine)

That phrase—an action with purpose—isn’t just legalese. It reflects a rhetorical shift I’ve been warning about for years: intention. Anti-abortion activists want to divorce abortion from healthcare by defining it as an intention, rather than a medical intervention. That way, they can say that it’s not really an abortion if someone ends a life-threatening or nonviable pregnancy—allowing Republicans to dodge political backlash.

Most importantly, the hope is to further divide us into good women who wanted to be pregnant and bad women who didn’t. The truth, of course, is that an abortion is an abortion is an abortion.

But consider the implications if Republicans are successful in defining abortion as an intention: 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? You can see why they’re so eager to make that rhetorical change.

Before we move on to the next section, just a fun fact for your evening: While Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America refuses to comment on what’s happening to Adriana Smith, they did find time to give a “Medal of Courage and Sacrifice” to Lauren Handy, the woman who was found with five fetuses in her Washington, DC home. Charming.

Care Crisis

This summer, hundreds of OBGYNs will travel to the headquarters of the American Board of Obstetrics & Gynecology (ABOG) to take their certifying exams—in Texas.

That’s right, ABOG is forcing OBGYNs—many of whom provide abortions—to travel to one of the most dangerous states in the country for abortion providers. The penalty for performing an abortion in Texas is life in prison; this year, the state arrested its first abortion provider.

And while ABOG’s certifying exams aren’t legally required, being ‘board-certified’ is only theoretically voluntary—most hospitals and practices require OBGYNs have certification in order to work there. So if an OBGYN wants to keep working, they’re forced to take on legal, ethical, and—if they’re pregnant—medical risks by traveling to Texas.

That’s to say nothing of the physical danger providers face. Violence against clinics and healthcare providers has skyrocketed since the end of Roe. So maybe it’s not the best idea to have hundreds of OBGYNs descend on a publicly-listed building at the same time in a state filled with anti-abortion sentiment and lax gun laws??

I first wrote about ABOG’s requirement that OBGYNs travel to Texas back in 2023. I had hoped that by now—given the increase in criminalization and violence—that the group would be allowing doctors to take the test virtually. (Which is what they did during Covid.) But as I noted in my previous reporting, there’s a reason ABOG doesn’t want to make that accommodation: The organization just spent $34 million dollars on a new building—a 126,000-square-foot space for offices, a conference center, and—you guessed it—a testing facility.

Just a total nightmare. Read more in my 2023 piece below, and if you’re an OBGYN traveling to Texas this year, feel free to let us know how you’re feeling in comments.

Why Are OBGYNs Being Forced to Go to Texas?

“…Republicans’ childcare policy, like their pro-natalist policy, is based on one goal: undoing the historic gains in women’s rights and status, and pushing American women out of the workforce, out of public life, out of full participation in society—and into a narrow domestic role of confinement, dependence and isolation.”

- Moira Donegan, The Guardian

In the States

Some terrific news out of Maine today: The state House advanced a bill that would allow providers to keep their names off of prescription bottles of abortion medication. The legislation is meant to add an extra layer of legal and personal protection for healthcare providers, who are being targeted by anti-abortion states with criminal and civil charges.

Washington and New York have passed similar laws allowing providers to keep their names off prescription labels and other states (like Illinois) are considering the same.

This is an incredibly important protection for abortion providers. Because remember, Dr. Maggie Carpenter—who was brought up on criminal abortion charges in Louisiana and civil charges in Texas—was identified by law enforcement from her from patients’ prescriptions.

As Maine Rep. Sally Cluchey points out, providers are also being threatened and harassed: “They have been stalked, targeted with bomb threats and harassed at their homes. In far too many cases these incidents escalate into death threats.”

The bill will now move to the state Senate, and hopefully we’ll see a few other states (cough, California, cough) advance similar legislation.

Meanwhile, an abortion rights group in Kansas is suing the state over new Republican rules that make it harder for citizen-led initiatives to get on the ballot. You probably remember that Kansas voters staved off an anti-abortion amendment in 2022, kicking off a long streak of pro-choice ballot measure wins.

Anti-abortion legislators don’t want Kansas voters to have a chance to codify a measure of their own, so they’ve passed new restrictions on financial contributions for constitutional amendments. Kansans for Constitutional Freedom—which fought back against the 2022 anti-abortion amendment—filed a complaint in federal court last week.

Finally, since we’re talking about attacks on democracy: If you want some extra credit reading on how Missouri Republicans are trying to override the will of voters by repealing Amendment 3, KOMU has an overview, Ballotpedia lays out how Missouri will be the first state to decide whether to repeal abortion rights that they just enshrined, and WaPo has an easy to share video on what went down.

Quick hits:

• Pro-choice judge Chris Taylor announced today that she’s running for the Wisconsin Supreme Court;

• Parenthood has launched vasectomy services in two Hawaii centers;

• And more on the parental consent fight in Florida.

In the Nation

A White House official told the Associated Press that the White House is reviewing a list of recommendations to expand access to IVF. Donald Trump has glommed onto IVF as a potential save from voter backlash over abortion bans—calling himself the “fertilization president.” (🤮)

But the ultra-conservative, anti-abortion extremists populating the Trump administration aren’t exactly keen on expanding fertility treatments—which go against their religious beliefs. So here’s what we can expect from the White House when they finally do release an agenda or action on IVF: lots of lip service lauding growing families, without any policies that will actually help those families afford treatments or make clinics’ work safer or easier.

In fact, it’s much more likely that the administration will advance regulations on clinics under the guise of protecting “health and safety standards.” If you want a preview, just check out the IVF Protection Act that Republicans introduced last year. The bill introduced by Sens. Katie Britt and Ted Cruz defined IVF in a way that excluded the process most at risk from conservative policies: discarding embryos. (Discarding embryos is a normal part of the fertility treatment process—but the anti-abortion movement opposes it.)

Their bill also included language that protects states’ ability to restrict what happens to frozen embryos—setting the stage for restrictions similar to anti-abortion TRAP laws:

“Nothing in the IVF Protection Act shall be construed to impede States from implementing health and safety standards regarding the practice of in vitro fertilization.” (Emphasis mine)

We know, for example, that anti-abortion lobbyists want states to impose limits on how many embryos can be created, and dictate how those embryos can be used.

All of which is to say: Keep an eye out on what exactly the Trump administration says about IVF—and make sure to read past the headline and the hype.

Finally, I know we’re all watching the war on Planned Parenthood play out in Congress, where Republicans are trying to strip the reproductive healthcare group of Medicaid reimbursements and Title X funds. The move would effectively shut down access to contraception, STI testing, cancer screenings and basic preventive care for millions of low-income Americans.

Which, of course, is the point.

What’s more, the Congressional Budget Office says these moves would increase the federal deficit by $300 million over the next decade, thanks to higher costs from unintended pregnancies and fewer preventive health services.

And while House Speaker Mike Johnson has made noise about redirecting federal funding to crisis pregnancy centers, we know those groups don’t provide actual healthcare—and that they refuse to even talk about birth control.

Even some Republicans are balking: Rep. Mike Lawler and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick have voiced concern, knowing that stripping away care doesn’t play well with voters. But they’re the exception.

Maybe that’s because anti-abortion groups are threatening any Republicans that don’t all in line and vote to strip low-income Americans of healthcare. Kristi Hamrick from Students for Life said in a statement, “Wobbly GOP members need to remember that we will not forget any act of betrayal that allows Planned Parenthood and all abortion vendors to continue to prop up their disreputable operations with our hard-earned tax money.”

The House Rules Committee is set to meet tomorrow to discuss the budget reconciliation package that includes these provisions, so I’ll be keeping a close eye.

Quick hits:

• The Washington Post has a Styles section piece on EMILY’s List gala;

• A new study shows that TikTok is spreading misinformation about birth control;

• And a chilling piece from Jezebel on how the UK police are being trained to investigate abortion patients. (I’ll have more on this tomorrow.)