Ever since Roe v. Wade was overturned and abortion was returned to the states, the media has been searching for stories of pregnant women to use as pawns to demonize those against abortion.
This week, The Washington Post published a story about a Nevada woman who had a miscarriage and was arrested and charged with manslaughter. The story was widely shared on social media, with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof amplifying that narrative.
“A struggling Nevada mom suffers a miscarriage,” Kristof wrote on X. “Then the police show up and arrest her for manslaughter, and she’s sentenced to 2.5-8 years in prison. Only when a pro bono lawyer steps up and appeals does a judge reverse the conviction and set her free to return to her children. This is family values? Think about that as you vote.”
It appears Kristof, like many others, didn’t read the full Post story, which explains – albeit while attempting to downplay the situation – that Patience Frazier did things intended to end her pregnancy and admitted as much to law enforcement.
For starters, Frazier’s arrest took place in 2018, four years before Roe was overturned. Abortion is also legal in Nevada, even now that Roe is no longer in place.
When Frazier first learned she was pregnant, she knew she was in trouble because the baby was not her boyfriend’s and she feared being kicked out of his home. A few days later, she scheduled an abortion, but she didn’t have a working car and couldn’t find a ride to the abortion facility before she was 24 weeks pregnant – which is when the baby would be viable and Nevada law bans abortion. At that point, Frazier would have been in her third trimester.
She didn’t see any doctors about her pregnancy and told police she didn’t know how far along she really was. She purchased cinnamon capsules after learning they could help end her pregnancy and took twice the recommended amount to do so. Medical experts later testified there was no evidence to suggest cinnamon could end a pregnancy.
On April 21, 2018, Frazier says she miscarried her son and tried to give him CPR when she noticed that she could see his facial features. She said she cradled her son’s body and then buried him in the yard, crying all the while.
A month later, a woman who babysat for Frazier and sheriff’s deputy Jaqueline Mitcham told Mitcham she believed Frazier “got rid of her baby.” Mitcham believed Frazier’s baby was born alive and then killed, but the medical examiner testified that there was no evidence the baby was born alive.
The toxicology report did, however, find marijuana and methamphetamine in the baby’s system.
Believing Frazier had done something wrong, Mitcham investigated the case, even as her male colleagues told her there was nothing she could do.
Frazier’s own mother told police that her daughter had attempted to end her previous pregnancies by drinking bleach (which Frazier denied to the Post), taking meth, and “doing all kinds of pills.” Frazier’s mother even showed investigators text messages from a previous pregnancy where Frazier said she “tried to miscarry the whole time I knew I was pregnant” by taking pills and lifting heavy objects.
Frazier admitted to taking cinnamon and lifting heavy objects to try and end her pregnancy, and, due to her mother’s statements and the drugs found in the baby’s body, she was charged with taking drugs to end a pregnancy and a lesser charge of concealing a birth.
Though Frazier cried when she was arrested, Mitcham would later say it seemed like a child pretending to cry so they could get out of trouble.
Frazier’s public defender worked out a deal for probation, but a Nevada Division of Parole and Probation employee recommended up to 10 years in prison. The employee had noted that, while Frazier’s attorney kept using the word “fetus,” the autopsy report referred to the baby as an “infant” who was between 28 and 32 weeks old.
The judge sentenced Frazier to 30 months to eight years in prison, but that sentence was later set aside due to ineffective assistance of counsel.
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