Amari Marsh had just finished her junior year at South Carolina State University in May 2023 when she received a text message from a law enforcement officer.
“Sorry it has taken this long for paperwork to come back,” the officer wrote. “But I finally have the final report, and wanted to see if you and your boyfriend could meet me Wednesday afternoon for a follow up?”
Marsh understood that the report was related to a pregnancy loss she’d experienced that March, she said. During her second trimester, Marsh said, she unexpectedly gave birth in the middle of the night while on a toilet in her off-campus apartment. She remembered screaming and panicking and said the bathroom was covered in blood.
“I couldn’t breathe,” said Marsh, now 23.
The next day, when Marsh woke up in the hospital, she said, a law enforcement officer asked her questions. Then, a few weeks later, she said, she received a call saying she could collect her daughter’s ashes.
At that point, she said, she didn’t know she was being criminally investigated. Yet three months after her loss, Marsh was charged with murder/homicide by child abuse, law enforcement records show. She spent 22 days at the Orangeburg-Calhoun Regional Detention Center, where she was initially held without bond, facing 20 years to life in prison.
While this prosecution was completely fucked up and was 100% linked to the criminalisation of abortion (and therefore miscarriages and pregnancy in general), the issue was that following the traumatic premature birth she didn’t immediately remove the baby from the toilet
Moving north wouldn’t have helped on paper, as the alleged crime of letting your baby drown is still illegal
That said, possibly a more progressive state might have had the good sense to not prosecute or even treat this as a criminal matter. On the other hand, the DA where this happened was a Democrat according to the article
A grand jury declined to indict her, so it ended ‘okay’, apart from all the unnecessary additional horrific trauma inflicted on a grieving mother and being a harrowing sign of dark repressive times
It ended OK after three weeks behind bars accused of murder? That’s not an OK end unless people get fired and she gets paid.
Right, I was trying to imply that it wasn’t really okay, hence the ‘okay’ in inverted commas and stuff - this obviously isn’t okay
Thankfully her peers had some sense. DA deserves kick to face for stress caused on her. Like go after dangerous people looking to harm others not this.