{"id":1416,"date":"2026-08-11T19:44:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1416"},"modified":"2026-08-11T19:44:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T19:44:32","slug":"north-carolina-teen-was-arrested-for-allegedly-self-managing-an-abortion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1416","title":{"rendered":"North Carolina Teen Was Arrested for Allegedly Self-Managing an Abortion"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a <\/span><\/i>quick donation<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Read more Amid Measles Outbreak, Trump Signs Order Furthering Anti-Vaccine Movement<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Abortion opponents have long claimed that abortion bans aren\u2019t meant to target pregnant people, but rather the providers who perform the abortions. Time and again, that has proven to be a lie. This time, the target is a teenager.<\/p>\n

Just this month, an 18-year-old young woman in Durham, North Carolina, was arrested and charged with a litany of crimes for allegedly self-managing an abortion at 31 weeks \u201cin an attempt to terminate her pregnancy early,\u201d her arrest warrant states. We are not naming her here.<\/p>\n

According to law enforcement, after she allegedly took medication abortion at 31 weeks, she sat down on the toilet and gave birth. Someone called 911 \u2014 it isn\u2019t clear who \u2014 and emergency services arrived at the home. From there, her nightmare continued to escalate.<\/p>\n

The News & Observer<\/em> reports that the young woman has been charged with \u201cassault inflicting serious bodily injury on an unborn child, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are serious felonies with years, even decades, of possible prison time accompanying them. This young woman, who only just turned 18 in June, is facing long-term incarceration for allegedly purchasing and using medication abortion \u2014 mifepristone and misoprostol, two medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration \u2014 to terminate her own pregnancy.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not clear what the crime actually is<\/em>. Because the information about this case is from law enforcement, it is understandably suspect. We don\u2019t know if she took medication abortion \u2014 the Durham police say that they were told by her partner that she did. There\u2019s no way to prove that she took medication abortion at all, no test that will make clear that she took abortion pills. And even if<\/em> she did, that isn\u2019t illegal.<\/p>\n

\u201cFundamentally, self-managing an abortion is not a crime,\u201d Dana Sussman, senior vice president at Pregnancy Justice, told Truthout<\/em>. \u201cNorth Carolina has rejected fetal personhood, which means that you cannot convert laws around children or other people to apply to embryos and fetuses \u2026 there is no basis in North Carolina law for these charges.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more As Foodborne Illnesses Surge, People Turn to Local Farms for Certainty<\/a><\/p>\n

The young woman\u2019s 19-year-old partner is charged with negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury. They are both facing prison time because they were young, pregnant, scared, and lived in a state where her body was subject to an unjust 12-week abortion ban that would have been unconstitutional just four years ago. And there isn\u2019t even a legal basis for the charges in the state.<\/p>\n

In the first two years after Roe<\/em> was overturned, Pregnancy Justice counted 412 pregnant people who have been charged with pregnancy-related crimes, despite abortion opponents\u2019 insistence that they never intended, nor wanted, to see abortion patients prosecuted. \u201cThe foundation of [that criminalization] is the use of laws that were never intended to apply to pregnancy,\u201d explained Sussman. The criminalization of pregnancy often relies on reinterpreting existing criminal statutes, including child abuse or drug endangerment, to penalize pregnant people for their pregnancy outcomes, even though these laws were originally written for entirely different purposes. In the case of the North Carolina teenager, \u201cThere is very clear language in the statutes that talks about harm to an \u2018unborn child\u2019; that is very specific about harm by an external actor to someone who is pregnant. That is not about a pregnant woman or pregnant person doing anything to their own body,\u201d Sussman said.<\/p>\n

This is in Durham, one of the bluest counties in the state of North Carolina. Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry publicly vowed in 2022 not to prosecute abortion cases in her district. Deberry\u2019s office did not respond to several requests from Truthout<\/em> for comment. In a statement to The News & Observer,<\/em> she said, \u201cWhat I can say is that I have been on the record over and over again saying I believe a woman has the right to choose and has the right to make decisions about her own body, and we will review the evidence in this case in that light,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The charges against this teenager should obviously be dropped, but the damage to her life, the trauma of experiencing this kind of state policing in a moment when she needed support the most, can\u2019t be undone. This is the legacy of abortion bans: They punish pregnant people, ensnaring them in the criminal legal system and traumatizing them for the simple fact that they became pregnant and didn\u2019t wish to continue to be pregnant. Dobbs <\/em>has created a generation of criminalized individuals, and even if those charges are dropped and those convictions overturned, people who can become pregnant know the stakes if they want an abortion. The possible chilling effect of these kinds of arrests can become life and death. If you are having a complication or miscarrying and you live in a banned state, these arrests remind you that you could be imprisoned for asking for help. This is how pregnant people end up dead \u2014 not from taking medication abortion or going to an abortion clinic, but from being too scared to access care when they need it.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t an accident; it\u2019s by design. In recent years, more abortion opponents have embraced criminalizing pregnant people, as if their years of insistence to the contrary were a mere fever dream. This was calculated, an attempt to present a more respectable facade to the public while always knowing where this would lead. Dobbs<\/em> isn\u2019t about state\u2019s rights and it isn\u2019t about individual choice \u2014 it was always meant to be a trap, a net of criminalization for any pregnant person who dared to decide for themselves what they wanted for their own bodies.<\/p>\n

And now, it\u2019s ensnared this young woman. There\u2019s no crime here, and the charges should be dropped. But to truly undo this mess, to create a world in which these kinds of charges can never be brought, we\u2019re going to have to stop giving credence to the anti-abortion lie and start naming what abortion bans were always meant to be: a punishment.<\/p>\n

Read more ICE Stationed Undercover Agent Outside of Ilhan Omar Town Hall Meeting, She Says<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abortion bans have always been about criminalizing the pregnant person.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nNorth Carolina Teen Was Arrested for Allegedly Self-Managing an Abortion - Smart Moving Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1416\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"North Carolina Teen Was Arrested for Allegedly Self-Managing an Abortion - Smart Moving Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Abortion bans have always been about criminalizing the pregnant person.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/smartmovinghome.com\/?p=1416\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Smart Moving Home\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-11T19:44:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=1416#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=1416\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ec0d70042821fd684a174c8d0e8becfa\"},\"headline\":\"North Carolina Teen Was Arrested for Allegedly Self-Managing an Abortion\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-08-11T19:44:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=1416\"},\"wordCount\":1085,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=1416#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/08\\\/b8ecf3f838fc996871d56a38a0f71d8f.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=1416#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=1416\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/smartmovinghome.com\\\/?p=1416\",\"name\":\"North Carolina Teen Was Arrested for Allegedly Self-Managing an Abortion - 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