A stillbirth and Facebook post expressing her grief landed her in prison for over 2 years. Experts say it’s part of a pattern

By Emma Tucker, CNN

(CNN) — “Why would you be sorry? Why would you be sorry, Patience?”

Patience Rousseau, then 26, was shivering on the doorstep of the house she was living in with her two children as the sheriff’s deputy repeated her question.

The Humboldt County, Nevada, sheriff’s deputy was questioning Rousseau about a Facebook post she had made a few weeks earlier that expressed grief about her stillbirth and mentioned the name she gave her baby posthumously, body camera footage shows.

“I’m so sorry, Abel,” Rousseau had written in the post.

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.

Rousseau’s case fits into an emerging pattern where women are swept up in criminalization – even in states where abortion is legal – by prosecutors reaching for antiquated statutes or laws that were never intended to punish pregnant women and those experiencing pregnancy loss or birth, including abuse of a corpse, child neglect or even homicide, according to several abortion law experts CNN spoke with.

“There’s been a really dedicated effort to criminalize pregnancy outcomes alongside abortion,” said the legal director of nonprofit Pregnancy Justice, Karen Thompson.

There has been a notable uptick in these cases, in a separate but parallel lane to cases linked to stricter anti-abortion laws, since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and stripped the federal constitutional right to abortion, the experts said. The US saw the highest number on record of people criminally charged for conduct related to pregnancy in the first year after the decision, according to data from nonprofit legal advocacy organization Pregnancy Justice.

For Rousseau, the entire ordeal was traumatic, from the stillbirth to being arrested. “I thought I was doing what was right for my circumstances, and then to be told that I was wrong, right after going through all of that alone … and then to be punished for all of it without getting any sort of help mentally has hurt me so much,” she told CNN.

Rousseau served over two years in prison before her conviction was vacated in 2021, with the judge saying her public defender was overworked and ineffectively advised her to enter a guilty plea. She was awarded a $100,000 settlement this February, according to court documents.

Judge Charles McGee wrote in a strongly worded decision that Rousseau’s case “ranks right up there with a thankfully precious few cases involving a total miscarriage of justice.”

‘I didn’t understand why they were there’

Before she went to prison, Rousseau’s life was defined by constant change – from the countless times she had moved to the jobs she worked.

At 14 years old, she could insulate a house “better than most men” and assemble a roof in high heels, she said. As far as jobs go, Rousseau has done “pretty much everything,” including bartending, detailing cars and cleaning hotels and Airbnbs.

Her favorite job was working as a taxi driver for 15 years because she could lend a sympathetic ear to passengers when they needed it most.

But on the day law enforcement showed up on her doorstep, Rousseau says she was the one who needed that support.

Rousseau was crying while sitting on the porch steps with her arms folded across her chest as deputies told her they were trying to figure out whether this was a “viable baby that you miscarried,” the body camera footage from 2018 showed.

Then-Deputy Jacqueline Mitcham asked her to estimate how big her belly was, prompted her to demonstrate the size of the baby with her hands, and asked her why she didn’t call 911.

“I didn’t want to get put in the hospital,” Rousseau explained. “Who’s gonna take care of my kids?”

She repeatedly told the deputies she didn’t know how far along she was in the pregnancy and had done nothing wrong. She explained she was just lying in bed when the stillbirth happened.

“Have you given much thought about why that happened?” asked Mitcham.

“Because I did everything I could to have a miscarriage,” the mother replied, saying she ingested cinnamon – which she read online could naturally end a pregnancy. She also told authorities her car broke down a lot and that she had to push the vehicle when it did.

But doctors would later testify there was no scientific proof the actions Rousseau described had caused the stillbirth – a point the judge later cited in his order vacating her conviction.

Cases like Rousseau’s are complicated and nuanced, as it’s common for women who have mixed feelings about a pregnancy that ends in a stillbirth or miscarriage to experience guilt, her lawyer Laura Fitzsimmons, who led the effort to vacate Rousseau’s conviction, said.

The mother explained to deputies she had made an appointment to get an abortion at a clinic about 165 miles away in Reno, but she was “stranded” in the rural town with no way to get there because her car had broken down. With two children already, she had no job or any support from friends and family. Having faced homelessness and poverty, Rousseau said she felt she couldn’t take care of another child.

When Mitcham asked if she used any drugs, Rousseau said she only smoked weed.

Navigating challenges was nothing new for Rousseau who said she had suffered abuse throughout her childhood and into adulthood. She said she moved dozens of times while growing up – from various towns in South Dakota, then in Colorado, Wyoming and Washington.

But she has always tried to make the best out of what she has, working hard to pay for daycare even as she struggled to find affordable housing so that she and her children didn’t have to live in a car, Rousseau said.

The day officers showed up, however, sticks out as one of the hardest days of her life. Rousseau said she watched as authorities dug up Abel’s remains.

“I didn’t understand why they were there and didn’t understand what I had done so wrong to deserve to be treated the way I was,” Rousseau said.

She also had to relive the traumatic night of losing the child. She tearfully told deputies during an interrogation two days after they visited the home how she had woken up bleeding heavily and in pain, how she had tried to give the baby CPR and how she buried him in the yard.

The mother tried to explain the shock and fear she felt that night – even though she had hoped to lose the pregnancy because she couldn’t afford to raise another child.

“I struggle to get them diapers, and I struggle to get milk in the house,” she told investigators. “We haven’t had food in two weeks because no one will give us a ride to town.”

She would be booked on manslaughter charges at the end of that interview, crying and pleading with deputies, saying she’d done nothing wrong as they took her into custody, footage showed.

A charging document accused her of unlawfully killing an unborn child by “beating her abdomen and/or consuming drugs or other substances.”

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department declined to comment on the case against Rousseau when contacted by CNN and said Mitcham is no longer with the department.

Since her case, even more women criminalized for pregnancy outcome

The 1911 statute under which Rousseau was charged is written so broadly that a range of things – smoking weed, cigarettes or taking a substance like cinnamon – could be used as a basis for conviction, according to Fitzsimmons and Farah Diaz-Tello, a lawyer for a reproductive justice group that worked on Rousseau’s case.

And Rousseau isn’t alone. Cases involving women who are criminalized for a miscarriage, stillbirth or self-managed abortion in various states have become much more common, according to Diaz-Tello, who says they now represent a “bulk of our cases,” at her firm If When How.

One of those women is Moira Akers, who was sentenced in 2022 to 30 years in prison for second-degree murder and a concurrent sentence of 20 years for child abuse resulting in death after her baby was stillborn in an at-home delivery, said Diaz-Tello, whose firm represented Akers during trial.

Akers was convicted in Maryland, where abortion is legal, after prosecutors claimed her prior internet searches about abortion early in her pregnancy and lack of prenatal care were “highly relevant” for the charges of murder and first-degree child abuse, according to court documents.

“Like Patience’s case, this case is built on stigma, not facts. There are many reasons folks may consider an abortion early in their pregnancy—deciding whether or not to continue a pregnancy is a normal thing that many of us will do in our lives,” Diaz-Tello said.

Akers’ conviction was also reversed by the Supreme Court of Maryland, and she is awaiting a new trial this summer, Diaz-Tello said.

The Howard County State’s Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, told CNN Akers is “alleged to have murdered her newborn infant and then hid the baby’s body in her closet.” Given the case is pending trial, the office said it “cannot comment further.”

Similarly, Brittany Watts was charged in 2023 with felony abuse of a corpse after she had a miscarriage and left the nonviable fetus at home in Ohio, court records show. A year later, a grand jury dismissed the case, concluding insufficient evidence for an indictment against Watts, according to the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s office.

There were at least 412 criminal cases related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss or birth in the two years after Roe v. Wade was overturned, most of which were against people with low income and nearly all alleging substance use during pregnancy, according to data from Pregnancy Justice. While the cases were brought in both blue and red states, the vast majority took place in Alabama and Oklahoma, the data showed.

While there isn’t a single trend in the types of laws used, such cases have emerged in the backdrop of increased hostility against reproductive rights and are fueled by anti-abortion rhetoric and stigma, said Thompson and Diaz-Tello.

Prosecutors have “overwhelmingly charged” pregnant people under statutes that don’t require them to prove the person actually harmed the fetus or infant, the report said. In that two-year period, most of the cases were linked to child abuse, neglect or endangerment charges, data showed.

Three clients of Thompson’s legal advocacy nonprofit are currently facing murder charges based on having a stillbirth, she said.

Rousseau ‘portrayed as an antichrist,’ judge says

Fitzsimmons, a lawyer who helped protect reproductive rights in a Nevada 1990 referendum, was planning to retire soon when she heard about Rousseau’s case from a woman who had worked for Planned Parenthood, she said.

“She called and she said, ‘Did you know there’s a woman in prison in Nevada for terminating her own pregnancy?” Fitzsimmons said. “I thought this woman was crazy because it couldn’t happen. But boy was I wrong.”

She started representing Rousseau in 2020, pro bono, and filed a wrongful conviction complaint after determining the case was a “gold mine for relief.”

Fitzsimmons brought in several medical experts who testified in 2021 that there was no scientific evidence to support any causal association between Rousseau’s behaviors during pregnancy and its outcome.

Washoe County medical examiner Dr. Laura Knight, who performed the autopsy on Rousseau’s child, estimated the gestational age of the fetus to be between 28 and 32 weeks, but testified it was impossible to confirm the age or cause of death, or to say whether there were any signs of life after the stillbirth.

A toxicity report had detected methamphetamine in the baby’s fetal tissue, but neither that nor Rousseau’s marijuana use, nor lifting heavy objects and taking cinnamon pills – even in combination – would “either cause a stillbirth or premature labor,” Knight testified.

Citing Rousseau’s “extensive history of trauma,” another doctor and OB-GYN, Mishka Terplan, testified “structural barriers” prevented Rousseau from getting an abortion, saying it was “unfortunately common.” Terplan added: “Her life and her pregnancy loss should evoke care and compassion not criminalization.”

And Rousseau’s first public defender testified he was struggling under a “crushing caseload” while he was representing her, according to court documents. He “fell on his sword,” Judge McGee wrote, saying he admitted in testimony “every fault, every missed defense, every missed strategy.”

McGee ultimately decided to vacate Rousseau’s conviction on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel, while also citing Rousseau’s lack of knowledge of the gestational age of the fetus.

“Patience has been portrayed as an antichrist, but this Judge thinks she is, instead, just a mother caught hopelessly in the web of poverty with a lack of any support system,” he wrote in his decision.

McGee noted prosecutors had to show Rousseau knowingly intended to terminate the pregnancy after the 24th week for a manslaughter charge, but they were unable to prove she knew she had “crossed the line.”

The judge set aside Rousseau’s earlier guilty plea, noting she may have been “coerced” to enter it.

Rousseau told CNN she felt she had to plead guilty “to something that I knew I wasn’t guilty of … It still gets hung over my head, even though I’m exonerated.”

For roughly three years, Rousseau still waited in painful uncertainty, wondering whether she would be prosecuted again and stand trial, Fitzsimmons said, until Judge Michael Montero dismissed the case with prejudice over the district attorney’s objections on April 7, 2025.

The Humboldt County District Attorney declined to comment when contacted by CNN.

Abel’s remains were brought to deputy’s home

Deputy Mitcham was a familiar face to Rousseau when officers showed up at her doorstep to serve a search warrant because a woman who sometimes babysat her children was a friend of Mitcham’s, according to Fitzsimmons.

In the police report, Mitcham wrote that the woman sent her a screenshot of Rousseau’s Facebook post, which prompted her to check medical records without finding anything “indicating a pregnancy nor any OB/GYN visits.”

At the 2021 hearing, Mitcham testified she was “sad for Patience” because she felt the mother “didn’t have many options. She didn’t have a lot of help.” Mitcham explained she had a 1-year-old child at home and the case “really hit me hard,” adding: “It still hurts me. Haunts me.”

After she was released from prison, Rousseau repeatedly asked where Abel’s remains were being held, and Fitzsimmons told her they were still in custody and they would retrieve them once the case was dismissed, the attorney said.

But it wasn’t until a Washington Post reporter, Caroline Kitchener, went to Mitcham’s home in 2023 to interview her for a story about Rousseau’s case that the mother and her lawyer found out what happened to the remains, Fitzsimmons said.

Mitcham told the reporter she claimed the remains of Abel from a Nevada funeral home and recounted how she told the funeral director: “I’m taking him. That’s my baby,” according to the Washington Post report.

The ashes of Abel were then placed on a shelf in Mitcham’s Texas home in a wooden box with a blue heart, the report said.

Mitcham declined to comment on the story when contacted by CNN.

Both Fitzsimmons and Rousseau were disturbed and overwhelmed to learn what happened to the remains, Fitzsimmons said. Now, Rousseau’s attorneys are exploring “all possible remedies to secure the return of the remains,” they said.

Rousseau says she still hasn’t been able to grieve Abel’s loss, saying: “How can you grieve something that’s not there?”

‘No matter what, don’t give up’

There was one person waiting outside the prison when Rousseau was released: Fitzsimmons. It was the first time they met in person. They went to eat surf n’ turf together for dinner and drove to Target because Rousseau didn’t have any clothes, Fitzsimmons said.

Fitzsimmons then drove them back to her house, where Rousseau stayed the night, she said. That next morning, Rousseau told her lawyer about how she couldn’t sleep because it was so silent and she had been so accustomed to the constant cacophony of sound in prison, Fitzsimmons said.

From there, they flew together to Reno – Rousseau’s first time flying on a plane – where the mother rented a U-Haul and drove to Winnemucca to pick up her children, some furniture and “started her new life,” Fitzsimmons said.

“It was great because I got to go home to my kids, but at the same time, I didn’t have a home to go home to, so it was scary. I lost everything because I went to prison,” Rousseau said.

It wasn’t until this March that Rousseau and her children finally got stable housing and a car after receiving money from the settlement, she said. While it’s the most money she’s ever had, Rousseau says she wishes she could have gotten a bigger settlement.

Since her release, the mother has given birth to another boy and has a stable job at a gas station in Sturgis, South Dakota, where she helps with upkeeping drag strips for races.

And when she’s not working, she spends time outdoors with her children – camping, fishing, gardening and going to Orman Dam Lake. They are building a big garden together in the backyard, and her boys are growing strawberries and watermelons.

“I’ve got seven trees, I have one of the most rare trees: a yellow maple tree in my yard,” she said.

Her face lights up when she talks about watching her children grow up as well as their shared passion for animals, including their pets: a turtle, leopard gecko, fish and five dogs.

Part of her weekly routine for the past five years has been talking to Fitzsimmons on the phone. She gets emotional speaking about her, saying her lawyer was the only person who believed in her when “no one else did and that meant the world.”

Rousseau is still trying to figure out how to explain to her three boys – ages three, nine and 11 – what she went through, but she is going to wait until they are old enough to fully understand, she said. “I want my boys to look at women like we are as equal as them,” she said.

“I came home, I never gave up, and I always fought for them and fought for them to stay together this whole time and that’s always been my goal,” she said.

Rousseau hopes telling her story will make it known that women in her position need more help. “No matter what, don’t give up,” she said through tears. “I was ready to give up because I didn’t think I was ever getting out. Nobody should feel that way.”

“We need people that understand us, that understand that we’re not perfect, that we have our struggles, and sometimes we need people that can understand that enough to not just push us away, but to bring us in closer and try for us for once,” Rousseau said.

“If everyone gives up on us women, there’s nothing left in this world that is worth living for, because we make the world what it is,” she added. “We create the new life; we teach the new life.”

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