A woman in North Carolina and her boyfriend were arrested last week after she allegedly took the abortion pill while 31 weeks pregnant and gave birth to a baby in a toilet. 18-year-old Syeisha Johnson and 19-year-old Elijah Speight face a charge of negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury. Johnson also faces two other charges: assault inflicting serious bodily injury on an unborn child and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
The case highlights the critical issue of loose or nonexistent enforcement of laws governing the disbursement and use of abortion pills. The woman allegedly took mifepristone and misoprostol, drugs used to induce abortion. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of these drugs for up to 10 weeks of gestation. In the state of North Carolina, the abortion pill is legal up to 12 weeks gestation.
Johnson and her boyfriend found out about the pregnancy when she was 20 weeks pregnant, according to a search warrant obtained by WRAL. The warrant states that she ordered the pills from Virginia.
Arrest and search warrants indicate that Durham, North Carolina, police and firefighters responded to a call to Johnson’s home on July 29, though it is not clear from reports who made the call. When they arrived at the home, they found that Johnson had given birth to a baby, who was found in the toilet. Firefighters performed CPR on the baby and took the child to a hospital for treatment.
There are currently several pro-abortion organizations that advertise their illegal shipment of abortion drugs to states with restrictions. Plan C, a pro-abortion group, gives women resources about how to access these drugs, while downplaying the legal troubles they could encounter.
“Research shows that hundreds of thousands of people have received and used pills by mail over the past few years with no legal problems,” the Plan C website states. “But, in rare cases (less than 1%), people have gotten in legal trouble, even though most states don’t have laws against doing your own abortion.”
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., referred the organization to the Department of Justice this July for criminal investigation. In his letter to then-Attorney General nominee Todd Blanche, Hawley called Plan C “the referral and logistics hub for shipping abortion drugs into states whose laws prohibit it.”
Abortion drug manufacturers also profit from illegal abortions, Hawley said in the letter. Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, both manufacturers of mifepristone, refer women to Plan C.
Despite the illegality of Johnson’s alleged actions under North Carolina law, Durham County District Attorney Satana Deberry has made her pro-abortion stances clear. Deberry promised in 2022 that she would not prosecute “women who obtain abortions or the health care professionals who assist them.”
“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,” Deberry said regarding the case.
But because the baby survived, the parents face steeper charges than they may have otherwise. A law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said that “these are interesting and not-settled questions of law,” adding that the case is the first of its kind in North Carolina.
