Woman Arrested After Having Miscarriage And Disposing Of Fetus, Police Say (UPDATE)

A Georgia woman who was found unconscious after having a miscarriage was subsequently arrested as police accused her of illegally disposing of the fetus’ remains.

The charges were later dropped.

The Tifton Police Department said on March 21 that Selena Maria Chandler-Scott, 24, was suspected of one count of concealing the death of another person and one count of throwing away or abandonment of a dead body in connection with the fetal remains found in a dumpster outside her apartment complex. She was booked into the Tift County Jail, but jail officials told HuffPost she was released March 23 on bond.

The Tift County district attorney then reviewed whether there was sufficient evidence that Chandler-Scott actually violated state law, WALB News 10 reported.

“After thorough examination of the facts and the law, my office has determined that continuing prosecution is not legally sustainable and not in the interest of justice,” Tift County District Attorney Patrick Warren told the local outlet. “This case is heartbreaking and emotionally difficult for everyone involved, but our decision must be grounded in law, not emotion or speculation.”

At 6 a.m. on March 20, an ambulance responded to a call regarding an unconscious woman who was bleeding, police said. When they arrived, they determined the woman had experienced a miscarriage, and she was taken to Tift Regional Medical Center for treatment.

During the response, a witness told emergency responders that they saw the woman place the fetus in a bag and put it in the dumpster outside, police said. When police arrived at the scene, they recovered the dead fetus.

Blair Veazey, the Tift County deputy coroner, did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment but told WALB that an autopsy showed the fetus was approximately at 19 weeks of gestational age. Fetuses are generally considered viable, or able to survive outside the womb, around 23 or 24 weeks.

Veazy also told WALB there were no signs of injury or trauma, and the fetus never took a breath. It was determined that the woman had a natural miscarriage.

“You know it’s just an unfortunate, sad situation,” Veazey told WALB.

Patrick Warren, the Tift County district attorney, was out of office when HuffPost reached out for comment, but he told WALB that “there is no specific Georgia” law that “addresses an individual’s choice to dispose of a naturally miscarried, non-viable fetus” and generally, prosecution is not warranted.

“Georgia courts have held that once a baby is ‘born alive and has had an independent and separate existence from its mother’ then what happens to the child (injury or death) can be subject to criminal prosecution,” Warren told WALB.

Chandler-Scott’s family has started a GoFundMe for those wanting to offer financial support. As of Thursday, it had raised more than $18,000.

“In these sensitive moments of her life, it has caused not only her but her family emotional, financial, and mental stress,” the GoFundMe reads.

With the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, reproductive rights advocates have said that more women will be arrested for alleged crimes related to pregnancy even outside of abortions.

With abortion bans in half of the country, some women have also been denied care from doctors reluctant to carry out dilation and curettage procedures, or D&Cs; the procedure can also be performed to end pregnancies. At least three women in Texas have died after being denied medical treatment for miscarriages, including 32-year-old Porsha Ngumezi, who died in June 2023 when doctors refused to carry out a D&C. Medical experts said her death was preventable.

Jessica Valenti, a feminist writer and author of the newsletter “Abortion, Every Day,” said in a video on social media that the “normalization” of the Georgia arrest keeps her up at night.

“The fact that people are treating this like business as usual,” she said. “It is not. And this is such a huge part of their strategy to make us numb to their extremism, to get us accustomed to the horror stories, so as more and more of those stories come out, we’re not reacting with outrage.”