When a Murder Victim’s Pregnancy Becomes the Story

A Florida death penalty case raises the fetal personhood alarm

Kaylin Fiengo, 18 years old.

Last week, a Florida man was sentenced to the death penalty for murdering his girlfriend—a punishment that prosecutors emphasized relates to the fact that she was pregnant and refused to have an abortion.

The case isn’t just a horrific reminder that the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S. is murder. It also shines a light on the increasing normalization of fetal personhood within our legal system, and how intimate partner violence is being co-opted to attack our reproductive rights.

In 2022, Donovan Faison shot and killed his 18-year-old girlfriend, Kaylin Fiengo. He was found guilty of first-degree murder and killing an unborn child, with prosecutors focusing specifically on Fiengo’s pregnancy. State attorneys said an “aggravating factor” is “that Faison killed a child younger than 12”—a fetus—“while committing another capital felony, the premeditated murder of the mother.”

They implored the jury to vote for the death penalty for Faison, and by an 11-1 margin, the jury listened. (The Death Penalty Information Center tracks aggravating factors for the death penalty by state, and about a dozen explicitly list a victim’s pregnancy.)

Fiengo’s murder, like all intimate partner violence homicides, is devastating: an estimated 70 women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every month. But few of these cases have drawn the national outrage this case has—nor are 70 men per month sentenced to death.

There’s no doubt that Fiengo’s pregnancy played a role in the murder: Faison texted Fiengo, “Abortion!!” just prior to meeting and shooting her in a park. And pregnancy is one of the most dangerous times for victims of domestic violence.

But in a moment when the anti-abortion movement is pushing manipulative and dangerous claims conflating abortion access with abuse and ‘coercion,’ the case raises striking red flags and helps pave the way for a dangerous precedent—in which violence against a pregnant woman isn’t a crime against them so much as it is a crime against their fetus.

Earlier this year, for example, a Texas man was charged with capital murder after allegedly slipping his girlfriend abortion medication. He faces no charges for harming his girlfriend—only for what he did to her embryo.

In other words, the woman wasn’t the victim of a crime. Her pregnancy was.

Faison’s sentencing seems to follow the same logic, implicitly reinforcing the fetal personhood movement that’s surged post-Dobbs. And it builds on a clear pattern of the legal system establishing crimes against fetuses that are distinct from crimes against pregnant people—which can sideline or put pregnant people, themselves, at legal risk.

As If/When/How’s Sara Ainsworth, who served domestic violence victims as a legal advocate for several decades, told us, “A victim’s story and humanity should never depend on their pregnancy status.” Ainsworth warned that “conflating fetuses with children” is more likely to endanger pregnant women by “[increasing] the likelihood that survivors who are pregnant will face investigation and arrest.”

That’s why the added severity of Faison’s sentencing, and the ‘killing an unborn child’ charge, raise concerns for reproductive rights advocates. Leaving aside the fact that the death penalty—even for horrific crimes like Faison’s—is an egregious human rights violation, the implications for pregnant people are chilling.

Since the end of Roe, we’ve watched a stark increase in pregnant people facing criminal charges, including manslaughter, for their pregnancy losses. More and more states are introducing ‘equal protection’ legislation that would charge abortion patients with homicide—rendering them eligible for the death penalty in some of these states. (In 2025, over a dozen states considered such legislation.) And while nearly all states have fetal homicide laws meant to protect pregnant people from high rates of homicide, they’re often used to charge women for pregnancy loss.

And, even as Fiengo is the victim, Pregnancy Justice’s Dana Sussman noted that “it’s her pregnancy that is taking center stage in the news headlines.” She continued:

“Pregnancy in America leads to far too many preventable deaths—through intimate partner violence and through laws that place the fetus above the pregnant person. It is entirely possible to recognize these tragic losses without further entrenching a legal regime that gives embryos and fetuses the same, or more, rights than women.”

This presents more than legal danger for women: Contrary to anti-abortion narratives, bans place pregnant women at greater risk of gender-based violence. A new research paper from last month estimates post-Dobbs bans resulted in over 10,000 additional incidents of intimate partner violence within two years. The research indicates that a 100-mile increase in distance to an abortion clinic increases acts of intimate partner violence by “4.2 incidents per 10,000 reproductive age women per half year.”

And a recent survey from the National Domestic Violence Hotline found access to reproductive care is lifesaving for pregnant domestic violence victims—but abortion bans are shuttering clinics across the country. One 2024 study revealed a direct link between laws that shut down clinics (aka “TRAP” laws) and risk of intimate partner violence-related homicide. In 2023, a Texas man shot and killed his girlfriend for having an abortion despite his wishes. He was sentenced to life in prison in February rather than the death penalty, like Faison.

Indeed, abusers are more likely to coerce their victims into pregnancy—not out of it—as a way to forever entrap them. Yet anti-abortion activists aren’t interested in talking about that far more common dimension of reproductive coercion. Instead, they want to co-opt and twist legitimate concerns about violence against women as a way to push their dangerous bans.

AED first reported in 2023 that anti-abortion leaders had identified “coercion” as their most effective talking point to stigmatize and attack abortion rights—because, as one activist put it, “no one is openly in favor of coerced abortions.” Anti-abortion rhetoric about “coercion” has been everywhere ever since—including lawsuits brought by anti-abortion states, and conservative activists accusing doctors of mailing abortion pills to men who coerced their partners into ending their pregnancies.

This year, a handful of cases of abusive men coercing their partners into taking abortion pills have made national headlines—with anti-abortion groups weaponizing every case to call for added restrictions on abortion pills. We’re only going to see more of this.

Earlier this month, an Ohio grand jury indicted a doctor who allegedly gave his girlfriend abortion pills without her consent last month. The woman says she “was held down by the neck by [her] sexual partner after telling him she had a positive pregnancy test” and that the doctor “forced an unknown substance into her mouth.” Since this story came to light, the conservative National Review has an eye roll-worthy story called “Women Need Good Men,” on how “love is the antidote to our poisonous culture of abortion.” Conveniently for anti-abortion activists, the article argues that telehealth access to abortion pills is the culprit because it supposedly gives abusers free reign to force their girlfriends into abortions.

The horrific murder of Fiengo in Florida is precisely the sort of case that anti-abortion groups use to advance their agenda. Back in October, for example, LiveAction weaponized the case to manipulatively claim:

“Often, as occurred in Fiengo’s case, mothers are killed because they refuse to submit to pressure to abort their preborn children. Legalized abortion has created the expectation that women have abortions, and when they refuse to, abusive men feel justified in killing them.”

And while they self-identify as ‘pro-life,’ anti-abortion leaders and conservative politicians overwhelmingly support the death penalty. Take, for instance, anti-abortion attorney Christine Flowers, who recently wrote, “There is no through line between abortion and the death penalty. One kills innocent life. The other balances the eternal scales of justice.”

Where do we go from here? It’s crucial that we read between the lines when it comes to these cases, and understand how they can influence future policymaking and court battles. Our legal system largely takes its cues from precedent, and cases like this only further entrench the principle of fetal personhood. As law professor Mary Ziegler noted last year, the more states that adopt fetal personhood laws and rulings, the more likely the U.S. Supreme Court can say that fetal rights are a matter of history or tradition: “They’re going to say, ‘Well, look, there’s also all these states that hold this position.’”

We’ll continue to monitor anti-abortion activists’ responses to this sentencing and watch for other, similar, cases. In the meantime, this can’t be said enough: Abortion bans have been linked with increased rates of intimate partner violence and forced pregnancy grants abusers greater power over their victims. And, to be clear: A pregnant victim of domestic violence is the victim, in their own right—not their fetus.