A University of Kentucky student was indicted this week for a pregnancy loss that created a media frenzy last year.

The 22-year-old woman, who HuffPost is not naming for privacy reasons, was indicted Tuesday on charges including first-degree manslaughter, abuse of a corpse, tampering with physical evidence and concealing the birth of an infant. She was not initially arrested on the first-degree manslaughter charge; it was added by the grand jury. All of the charges cited in the young woman’s case are routinely used against women who have experienced miscarriage and stillbirth.

The woman was arrested in August after police were dispatched to her home following a report of a “deceased infant,” according to arrest records. The newborn was found wrapped in a towel and placed in a trash bag in her closet in Lexington.

She later told police “she believed the baby to be dead and wrapped the baby up like a burrito and laid next to it [on] the floor because it gave her a little comfort in the moment,” according to the affidavit.

It’s impossible to know what happened when the woman gave birth in August, but so often these stories and the choices people make during pregnancy and after a pregnancy loss are recast as villainous. Police, prosecutors and coroners are often quick to see a stillborn and believe that a crime was committed, instead of an obstetric emergency that became a tragedy. The Kentucky student is one of several women to recently be prosecuted on charges of concealing a birth and abuse of a corpse.

“The fact is, postpartum people will always be retrofitted into crimes — from ‘concealing a birth’ to reporting pregnancy loss to a hospital,” Karen Thompson, legal director at Pregnancy Justice, a legal advocacy organization for pregnant people, told HuffPost.

It’s unclear how far along the student was in her pregnancy. But the coroner on the case said the state’s child fatality review committee uses “infant” as an umbrella term that also includes fetuses, Abortion, Every Day reported shortly after the initial arrest.

“When we’re talking about ‘infants,’ [that could be] from zero to one years old, or one year old to a small child,” Fayette County coroner Gary Ginn told Abortion, Every Day in September. “A lot of times we’ll use the broad term of infant, we could be referring to a fetus, or we could be referring to a full-term, or we could be referring to a child that’s not walking, or a child that might even be walking, because all of them are considered infants.”

Women’s lives are routinely turned upside down by media coverage that uses mug shots and centers dramatic language like “dead infant” or “abuse or a corpse” to cast a nefarious light on pregnancy loss. Around 21,000 pregnancies end in stillbirths every year, according to a recent Harvard study — a much higher rate than previously believed.

These cases come into being “because somebody was shocked and offended,” Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel at If/When/How, told HuffPost earlier this week.

Abuse of a corpse is meant to prosecute grave digging and necrophilia, but it is commonly applied in cases where women either miscarried or delivered a stillborn and did not know what to do with the remains. Women have been arrested for flushing fetal remains down the toilet, for burying remains and even, similar to the Kentucky woman, for putting a stillborn in a bag and placing it in her closet. Just under 20 states have laws that make it a crime to dispose of pregnancy loss remains or categorize the disposal of remains as “abuse of a corpse.”

Concealment-of-birth statutes are also used to question women’s motives and choices after undergoing a pregnancy loss. These laws — still on the books in 15 states — are based on the archaic notion that a woman who had sex outside of marriage was immoral and more likely to hide her pregnancy and kill the newborn. They were first passed in the U.S. in 1696, when 10 American colonies adopted concealment-of-birth statutes because it had been common law in England.

This week, a Kentucky legislator introduced a law to remove penalties, including prosecution, for pregnancy outcomes, including miscarriage, stillbirth and abortion. The bill would also repeal the state’s concealment-of-birth statute.

The Kentucky medical examiner’s office determined that the Kentucky student’s “infant … was born alive,” according to an August press release from the city of Lexington. The cause of death was ruled “asphyxia by undetermined means.”

The Fayette County coroner’s office and the state medical examiner’s office did not immediately respond to HuffPost when asked how they determined the newborn was born alive. HuffPost also reached out to the young woman’s attorney for comment but did not receive a response.

Medical examiners often used something known as a lung float test to determine if a newborn was born alive. However, the process is deeply flawed and many experts, including the National Association of Medical Examiners, have warned against using it. The test originated in the 1600s and has been likened to Puritan-era witch trials, when women were thrown into open water and deemed witches if they floated.

“As we have seen time and again, any ‘born alive’ finding can only be determined in limited, very specific ways,” Thompson said. “Unless this medical examiner … eschewed the use of junk forensic science deployed for centuries to wrongly accuse women who have had stillbirths of murder, this finding must be taken with several grains of salt.”

People have always been criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes, even when Roe v. Wade was still standing. But since the Supreme Court repealed Roe and a dozen or so states have implemented near-total abortion bans, there has been a surge in the surveillance and criminalization of pregnant people.

There were at least 412 pregnancy-related prosecutions in the year after Roe fell — the highest number documented in one year since Pregnancy Justice began tracking in 1973. Over 161 people have been prosecuted specifically for pregnancy loss in the last 20 years, and many more have been investigated.

If you or anyone you know needs assistance self-managing a miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion, please call the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline at 833-246-2632. For confidential medical support or the Repro Legal Helpline at 844-868-2812 for confidential legal information and advice.

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