A South Carolina law enforcement investigation into fetal remains discovered at a water treatment plant is amplifying concerns about the criminalization of pregnancy loss in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. The Sumter County Sheriff’s Office said deputies were called Friday to a facility on Edgehill Road after workers found what appeared to be a fetus. The remains were sent to the Medical University of South Carolina for examination, and Sheriff Anthony Dennis requested the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division investigate.
Officials have released limited details about the remains while describing an investigative process focused on identification. Sumter County dispatchers received reports around 11:28 a.m. Friday that workers found what appeared to be a fetus at the water treatment facility. Deputies responded and confirmed the remains were a human fetus. Coroner Robbie Baker said the fetus was between 13 and 15 weeks and showed no signs of trauma. He said the fetus was male, and that an autopsy found it was not a live birth with extreme prematurity. Baker also said race could not be determined through visual examination. Investigators collected tissue samples during the examination and planned to send them to SLED in hopes of developing a DNA profile.
Baker’s public comments about the remains, along with the use of terms that carry legal and cultural weight, have become part of the controversy. In reporting cited in the account, Baker said, “it was a small fetus. Probably not more than 6 inches long. It was somewhat developed.” ABC News 4 reported that Baker said the case was being ruled a stillborn death, even though stillbirth is generally defined as a pregnancy loss after 20 weeks, while a loss before that is a miscarriage. WIS News 10 reported that SLED is “testing tissue samples to determine the race and locate the mother,” and said the coroner noted that race could not be immediately determined due to how long the fetus had been sitting in sewer chemicals.
Advocates and researchers who track pregnancy-related prosecutions have argued that the police posture itself is the alarm. Kylie Cheung, writing at Jessica Valenti’s newsletter Abortion, Every Day, questioned why law enforcement involvement is treated as routine in cases involving pregnancy remains, and why investigators would seek details such as race. “Our immediate questions: Why are pregnancy remains being investigated by law enforcement at all? How can 14-week fetal remains be ruled a ‘stillborn death’? And why are state authorities trying to determine the race of these pregnancy remains? This is particularly concerning given that women of color are overrepresented among criminal cases involving pregnancy,” Cheung wrote.
Laura Huss, a senior researcher at If/When/How, told Cheung that investigations can function as punishment even without charges, by turning grief and medical crisis into suspicion and surveillance. “Pregnancy losses aren’t crimes… No one should have to live with the fear that their miscarriage or stillbirth could result in cops showing up at their door, which is what investigations and media stories like this create,” Huss said.
The South Carolina investigation is unfolding against a national backdrop in which advocates say criminal charges tied to pregnancy outcomes have accelerated since Dobbs. Pregnancy Justice said last year that prosecutors initiated at least 412 cases nationwide from June 2022 to June 2024 charging individuals with crimes related to their pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth. Advocates argue that even when a state does not explicitly criminalize pregnancy loss, overlapping statutes and expansive interpretations of fetal personhood can create pathways for prosecution, particularly when law enforcement becomes involved at the earliest stage.
Pregnancy Justice has focused on how state legal frameworks can widen criminal exposure. Last month, the group released a report that “maps the matrix of laws and policies that can be used to criminalize postpartum people for how they respond to their own pregnancy loss in every state.” Its section on South Carolina describes a legal environment shaped not only by statutes, but by judicial interpretation. The report says that although South Carolina does not have a broad prenatal personhood law, its state Supreme Court establishes broad criminal prenatal personhood with the proposition that criminal statutes apply to “viable fetuses” unless the Legislature expressly says otherwise. A former attorney general also noted his position that prenatal personhood applies broadly to South Carolina’s laws. The report adds that, by extension, an attempt to criminalize the “destruction or desecration” or transportation without a permit of viable fetal remains could be made. Separately, people are required to report “stillbirth[s] when unattended by a physician.”
Karen Thompson, legal director of Pregnancy Justice, told Cheung that criminal charges should not be applicable in the Sumter County case, whether it was a miscarriage or an abortion, because of the viability requirement in state law. But she questioned the purpose of an investigation framed around identifying and locating a pregnant person when the remains are reported at 13 to 15 weeks. “So what is the point of this investigation, beyond terrorizing women through control and surveillance of their bodies?” Thompson said.
Even as investigators have not publicly detailed how the remains entered the wastewater system, the discovery has already been used to push new legislative restrictions in South Carolina. Abortion opponents in the state renewed calls for lawmakers to advance two bills described as responses to fetal remains and abortion access. One proposal, House Bill 5067, sponsored by Rep. Sarita Edgerton, would require the state Department of Environmental Services to conduct testing for urinary metabolites in certain wastewater treatment facilities. Another measure, House Bill 4760, sponsored by Rep. Wm. Weston Newton, would prohibit the mailing, shipping, or prescribing of abortifacient drugs, including from out-of-state sources. According to a statement from Students for Life Action, the bill would classify committing or attempting to commit an abortion using abortifacients as a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a fine of up to $100,000. The proposal would also allow certain civil actions to be filed and seek injunctive relief and damages. The bill includes exceptions preventing individuals convicted of abuse, trafficking, or rape from bringing related civil actions, according to supporters.
Advocates have pointed to recent cases outside South Carolina as examples of how quickly pregnancy loss can become a criminal matter once law enforcement takes the lead in shaping the narrative. The South Carolina investigation follows last week’s arrest of a Kentucky couple, Deann and Charles Bennett, after she was taken to a hospital following a reported miscarriage in November 2024. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, they were each charged with reckless homicide, and she also faced charges of abuse of a corpse, concealing the birth of an infant, and tampering with physical evidence.
Cheung and Valenti, writing about that Kentucky case, warned that early reporting often rests entirely on police accounts and can cause lasting harm even before facts are tested. “right now, all of the available information is coming from cops and law enforcement, so take it all with a grain of salt. Again and again, Abortion, Every Day has found police lying about these arrests, or misrepresenting what really happened. Too often, local media will parrot those facts’ uncritically and destroy people’s lives in the process,” they wrote. They also highlighted how public exposure can become part of the punishment. “Already, Deann and Charles’ mugshots have been splashed across Kentucky crime pages,” the pair added. “Deann is seen sobbing in hers.”
Pregnancy Justice’s January report also describes how viability-based fetal personhood reasoning can be used in Kentucky even when a broad prenatal personhood law is blocked. The report states: “Although Kentucky’s broad prenatal personhood law is enjoined, the state Supreme Court provides that a viable fetus is a human being within the meaning of the penal code. By extension, an attempt to criminalize the nonreporting and disposal of viable fetal remains could be made. Separately, Kentucky has a statute that prohibits ‘concealing [a] birth’ to ‘prevent a determination of whether it was born dead or alive.’”
In Sumter County, the known official details are narrow: a report of fetal remains at a wastewater facility, confirmation by deputies, an autopsy placing the remains at 13 to 15 weeks with no signs of trauma, and a state investigation aimed at building a DNA profile. The broader conflict is about what it means when pregnancy remains become a law enforcement matter, and how quickly an investigation can merge with legislative efforts to expand surveillance and restrictions.
“So what is the point of this investigation, beyond terrorizing women through control and surveillance of their bodies?”
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