Lauren Sausser | (TNS) KFF Health News
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — 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.
This August, 13 months after she was released from jail to house arrest with an ankle monitor, Marsh was cleared by a grand jury. Her case will not proceed to trial.
Her story raises questions about the state of reproductive rights in this country, disparities in health care, and pregnancy criminalization, especially for Black women like Marsh. More than two years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which allowed states to outlaw abortion, the climate around these topics remains highly charged.
Marsh’s case also highlights what’s at stake in November. Sixty-one percent of voters want Congress to pass a federal law restoring a nationwide right to abortion, according to a recent poll by KFF, the health policy research, polling, and news organization that includes KFF Health News. These issues could shape who wins the White House and controls Congress, and will come to a head for voters in the 10 states where ballot initiatives about abortion will be decided.
This case shows how pregnancy loss is being criminalized around the country, said U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a Democrat and graduate of South Carolina State University whose congressional district includes Orangeburg.
“This is not a slogan when we talk about this being an ‘election about the restoration of our freedoms,’” Clyburn said.
‘I Was Scared’
When Marsh took an at-home pregnancy test in November 2022, the positive result scared her. “I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to let my parents down,” she said. “I was in a state of shock.”
She didn’t seek prenatal care, she said, because she kept having her period. She thought the pregnancy test might have been wrong.
An incident report filed by the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
