The mother was in shock that day in May 2018 as several law enforcement officers, some in tactical gear, stood outside the rural Winnemucca home to serve a search warrant.
“I had a miscarriage, OK? A miscarriage. Why are you guys here over a f**king miscarriage?” Rousseau responded to the deputy.
The single mother, who was already struggling to afford care for her two young boys, was dealing with complicated feelings of ambivalence and guilt about her unplanned pregnancy and stillbirth, her attorney said. Rousseau told the deputies she had been taking large quantities of cinnamon and lifting heavy things while pregnant “to have a miscarriage.”
Deputies walked to a cross that was painted red with Abel’s name written in black on a green plot behind the house, according to the police body camera footage and a police report. They dug up the remains and carried them to a law enforcement vehicle, the report said.
Two days later, Rousseau was arrested and charged with felony manslaughter before she was convicted in Nevada, where abortion is legal, under what legal experts say is a vague and broadly written statute that makes it a crime for any woman to take drugs with the intent to terminate a pregnancy. She was also charged with concealing birth, a misdemeanor, but was not convicted on that charge.
88 Comments
TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world · 106 pts · 128d
Conservatives are such heartless ghouls. There is nothing they wont arrest and torture women over.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 41 pts · 128d
Agreed. I also wanted to note that this happened in May 2018.
TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 128d
Not sure you needed to repeat information from the first sentence of the post but no harm I guess.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 37 pts · 128d
Not everyone reads beyond the title.
I wanted to note it because this happened before the repeal of Roe v Wade.
TheTimeKnife@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 128d
Fair enough, thanks for the elaboration.
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 127d
You'd be surprised
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · -19 pts · 128d
Agreed. Am I wrong that she did everything possible to induce this miscarriage?
Conservatives. Amirite
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 21 pts · 128d
What's wrong with inducing a miscarriage?
Abortion was legal. It should still be legal, but it was legal when she did so.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 128d
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 128d
Abortion access is political.
Conservatives are the party that enact legislation criminalizing women's healthcare.
Why are you defending them?
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 128d
Abortion should be de facto legal until Congress is at least 51% women.
A bunch of old men have no business voting on what goes on between a woman and her doctor. That shit is archaic.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 10 pts · 128d
It should be legal regardless of what women in power believe as well.
It’s not an issue for politicians at all.
JasonDJ@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 128d
I don't disagree. But as long as there's no equal representation, this isnt politics, it's patriarchy. And I say this as a cis white man.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · -5 pts · 128d
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 11 pts · 128d
You just had to double down on being a disgusting asshole, didn't you.
dreamkeeper@literature.cafe · 2 pts · 127d
So what? It's her body not yours.
HootMcGoot@feddit.online · 22 pts · 128d
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 128d
The article details she started working in her very early teens.
meco03211@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 128d
11 is not "teens".
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -6 pts · 128d
Oh you don’t understand paragraphs, I see.
It doesn’t state that she started working at 14. By 14, she was a skilled laborer.
smh@slrpnk.net · 15 pts · 128d
I'm just trying to figure out when she'd spent 15 years as a taxi driver, before the age of 26.
26-15=11
15+11=26
Did she start as a taxi driver at age 11, or did she not work as a taxi driver for 15 years? I'm just not understanding the timeline.
fox2263@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 127d
I think it was badly worded in the article, I believe she was a taxi driver at 15 years of age.
smh@slrpnk.net · 6 pts · 127d
I think maybe "taxi driver" was her favorite job of the last 15 years. I agree that it's just badly worded in the article.
fox2263@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 127d
It’s just that the sentence before it was talking about the job she had at 14 so figured it was one after the next.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.cafe · 2 pts · 127d
I think that's what they were trying to say, and it just got garbled.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -2 pts · 127d
That’s exactly what the article was saying.
I’m so glad that y’all debated whether she was lying about her jobs. Very worthy of all of our time here.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 127d
She was 26 when she was arrested. The article doesn’t say how old she was when she was recounting her work experiences to the journalist.
HootMcGoot@feddit.online · 7 pts · 127d
If she was 26 in 2018 then she is around 34 now. 34-16 =18 years to be a taxi driver. -2 years in prison She could have done 15 years if she had been a taxi driver from 17-now, but who hires 17 year olds as taxi drivers?
Garbagio@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 127d
Bro have you ever traveled in America? Go to any airport in the country and you will see 15-20 local "taxi" services, a quarter of which run cash/venmo only.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -2 pts · 127d
Wish you spent half this energy for the actual bad people in this story instead of trying to prove that the victim lied about her work history.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 16 pts · 127d
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 19 pts · 127d
The cop stole the remains from her as well.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 127d
Bro what
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 127d
Yeah this story is insane and it’s driving me wild that no one has actually read the crazy details, but they’re getting more hung up on whether this woman lied about her work history.
She’s not the only woman to be treated this way either.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 127d
I don't understand, then, why you keep pretending that was accusing her of lying when you've been told multiple times it was about the bad journalism.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 127d
The fact that those men decided to only talk about that one small detail in this entire fucked up story says more than anything.
Not even a passing comment about how terrible this would have been for her to endure. No sympathy, nothing.
Just speculation about how she couldn't possibly have started working until later than she claimed.
robocall@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 127d
I would love to be able to afford kids. They really have become a status symbol at this point.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 127d
They can also be an albatross around your neck.
It really, really depends.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -5 pts · 128d
corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca · 27 pts · 128d
Removing access to safe healthcare will make people choose UNsafe healthcare.
Pre-medical cultures used a variety of toxins, for example, that when brewed wrong were extremely risky. That's where the average American is going with Mercenary healthcare and prison for even mentioning a pregnancy.
If she goes down for it, then her co-conspirators go down too.
meco03211@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 128d
Hell the bible even has instructions on how to do it! Luckily for the christofascists, they've never read the bible.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -3 pts · 128d
True, obviously the system is prone to make people do those things.
gruvn@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 128d
Do you not comprehend that all normal options were taken from her?
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -4 pts · 128d
How were all normal options taken from her?
gruvn@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 128d
When abortion is made illegal or inaccessible through state bans (triggered by the Dobbs decision) and birth control options are narrowed by revived federal laws like the Comstock Act (which criminalizes mailing contraceptives and abortion-related materials), women with unwanted pregnancies may self-induce miscarriages simply because they have no legal alternative—not because they prefer an unsafe method, but because safe, legal abortion has been taken away.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 10 pts · 128d
When abortion is outlawed, the only thing that changes is that more women die.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -3 pts · 128d
Absolutely, but it was not illegal or inaccessible to her, she simply did not know what to do with the other kids during her hospital stay. And to me, this sounds like a very cheap excuse.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 128d
Her conviction was vacated. That means it’s like it never happened. They were wrong to arrest and prosecute her.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 128d
You could at least read the article.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -15 pts · 128d
This does not answer my question. No options were taken from her. She did not go to the hospital because no one would be able to take care of the kids. What an amazing argument to then force an unethical miscarriage.
And things like “I don’t know how old the fetus was” is also on her. a) maybe don’t fuck like a bunny with so many people; b) absence of period minus roughly 4 weeks. That’s the min and max age of the fetus.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 11 pts · 128d
The cinnamon she ingested had no part in the miscarriage.
Should she had abandon her kids to get to the hospital instead?
Not all women have regular periods.
You’re clearly misinformed on this topic on several levels. Best to sit this one out with your pearl clutching.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 128d
Who's ethics? Yours?
The fetus was incapable of knowing it was gone. It rejoined the void that it came from. Your ethics are rejected.
YarrMatey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 127d
This is such a bad take. I guess I must be 3 years pregnant /s. You have no idea what it is like to be a woman and living in poverty, let alone one that is also a mother and cannot afford another kid. Slut-shaming is misogynistic as well, women are not mechanical clocks and we do not freak out over every missed period. Please reflect on this. The problem is capitalism once again, but you care more about a woman and a miscarriage instead of why she was in this predicament in the first place.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -3 pts · 127d
Come on, don’t put words into my mouth. I never did any slut-shaming. You can go fuck all you want, but please do not spread any diseases and do not get pregnant if you can’t afford a kid in the first place. Unfortunately it is not documented why she was getting pregnant. If she was raped? Hell get rid of that fetus. If she was too lazy to use protection? If you do abortion then, it is clearly unethical, no matter what.
Additionally, she clearly knew she was pregnant. So then you clearly know the rough min/max age of the fetus. This has nothing to do with just missing a period every now any then. So how did she know she was pregnant?
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 127d
Abortions aren't unethical.
You’re a hypocrite if you support abortion after rape but not otherwise.
You don’t understand anything about women and pregnancy if you think it’s that easy to determine how far along one is in pregnancy.
YarrMatey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 127d
This is the weird slut-shaming I was referring to.
Women cannot control whether they get pregnant or not. No birth control is 100% effective. Even the high percentages you see are 'perfect use' and mean for every 100 women, 10 women actually get pregnant with 'typical use' while using their birth control (Source). The higher effective ones are things like the IUD and arm implant, devices that are expensive and come with their own risks but are also not 100% effective; although they're the closest you can get. Women have all sorts of reasons for picking their chosen birth control, some cannot handle hormones at all. Even I've been wrecked by various birth controls. You are effectively saying sex is only for procreation and nothing else.
There is no reason to judge a woman's choice to abort as ethical or unethical. None. As in, it is offensive you are suggesting this. Shit happens. Most abortions are not due to rape and even knowing this, it does not fucking matter. The fact you assume she is lazy is atrocious. It isn't documented why she was pregnant because it's none of your business!
And no, knowing she was pregnant does not help determine how far along she is unless she had sex and then never had sex again after that and then caught on to her missed period (assuming she has regular periods, I personally do not even before I started birth control). C'mon, please web search this because women are not identical birthing machines.
athatet@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 127d
Alright everyone. Form a line. Make sure to ask zr0 for permission before you do any fucking.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 128d
She did nothing wrong.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -11 pts · 128d
She did nothing wrong? By trying to have a miscarriage? By risking permanently disabling a human just because she apparently was unable to go to the hospital to get a proper abortion?
Sure. Nothing wrong here.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 13 pts · 128d
Women are allowed to have autonomy over their own bodies.
She was jailed for 2 years for something that was legal.
You have no idea the burden of being this poor and in the situation she found herself in to hold judgment on her.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -13 pts · 128d
We are talking about mutilating a human, not about the health implications for her. I couldn’t care less what people do to their own body and I am very pro abortions. But there is a difference between ending a life ethically and slowly take the life away in an archaic way.
Or are you also killing your pets with shovels to avoid vet bills?
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 128d
No human was mutilated, or could be mutilated.
Many pets are put down to avoid vet bills... every second of every minute of every hour of every day.
Try fighting for real people over possible potential people, you'll be useful then.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 6 pts · 128d
Fetuses are literal parasites inside a woman’s body frankly.
It’s not comparable to killing pets, FFS.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -8 pts · 128d
Now it is obvious why you like the idea of forcing a miscarriage with cinnamon, if you call fetuses parasites.
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 128d
They’re functionally parasites, especially in the first trimester lol. They leech nutrients from their mother’s body.
Abortion is healthcare. Women deserve respect and autonomy.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 128d
It's an herbal abortion if her cinnamon treatment was the cause. if it had worked, it would be a proper abortion.
No human was harmed, don't you have better things to defend? Try defending people next time. Like the woman. She's a people.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · -5 pts · 127d
And if not, she might give birth to baby with low survival chances and constant pain. Obviously now it is cool to defend stone age methods. Enjoy the cinnamon taste I guess.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 127d
I wonder why this woman felt she needed to do it this way? Hmmm...
velma@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 127d
That was a possibility regardless of the cinnamon.
It was determined that she did not induce the miscarriage herself.
ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works · -6 pts · 128d