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.

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[–] 103 points 5 months ago (14 children)

Conservatives are such heartless ghouls. There is nothing they wont arrest and torture women over.

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  • [–] [S] 40 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Agreed. I also wanted to note that this happened in May 2018.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Not sure you needed to repeat information from the first sentence of the post but no harm I guess.

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  • [+] -17 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    Agreed. Am I wrong that she did everything possible to induce this miscarriage?

    Conservatives. Amirite

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  • [–] [S] 19 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

    What's wrong with inducing a miscarriage?

    Abortion was legal. It should still be legal, but it was legal when she did so.

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  • [+] -5 points 5 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] [S] 14 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    Abortion access is political.

    Conservatives are the party that enact legislation criminalizing women's healthcare.

    Why are you defending them?

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    It should be legal regardless of what women in power believe as well.

    It’s not an issue for politicians at all.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 16 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 19 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    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 cop stole the remains from her as well.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] [S] 12 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 5 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 20 points 5 months ago (34 children)

    Patience Rousseau, then 26

    Her favorite job was working as a taxi driver for 15 years

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 5 months ago (33 children)

    The article details she started working in her very early teens.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago (32 children)
  • [–] [S] -5 points 5 months ago* (31 children)

    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.

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (30 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (14 children)

    I think it was badly worded in the article, I believe she was a taxi driver at 15 years of age.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (13 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    Yeah, but I can't imagine using a 15 year old as my confidant. Then again, adults were telling me about their woes over the phone (I had a job calling people to tell them where to show for a phone book distribution gig).

    Hi, this is such and such company. Are you still interested in delivering phone books? Please show up at X sketchy parking lot to pick up your allotment.

    Oh, I can't. I just had a miscarriage/license suspended for drunk driving/court date. Let me tell you more details because you're Bad At Phone and Don't Know How To End A Call and Free Therapy.

    (edit: typo and formatting)

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  • [–] [S] -2 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    When did I ever say she was lying about her jobs? I said the timeline presented by the article didn't make sense because it didn't.

    A writer in need of an editor is different than an interviewee telling lies.

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  • [–] [S] -2 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

    And it’s the only part of the entire story that you felt was worthy of discussing.

    This entire speculating thread just looks like ways to discredit the victim.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (5 children)

    You jumped to insulting people's reading skills when they questioned something that was unclear in the article ("Oh you don’t understand paragraphs, I see.")

    I responded because my numbers autism said "ah, I see. Velma doesn't get how the math doesn't math, let's make that clear so the world is less confusing."

    If you'd just said "huh, yeah, the reporter could have worded that better" then this thread would have ended. Instead I think that you don't care that the math doesn't math and you're viewing attempts to figure out what the reporter meant the convey as attempts to call the interviewee a liar. I hadn't even considered that the interviewee might have been wrong about her life experience until you suggested it--it seems more likely that the reporter's article was unclear, especially since the "15 years" bit wasn't a direct quote.

    I didn't comment on anything else in the article because I didn't think I had much to contribute on anything else. My stance is so obvious that what would I say on that that hasn't already been said? Here: "yeah, that's fucked up. I'm glad she's no longer incarcerated. The USAian system has problems. This happened before the overturn of Roe v Wade‽ I can imagine how much worse a similar situation would be handled now".

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 5 months ago* (4 children)

    You misread the article and immediately jumped to conclusions about her work history.

    I'm allowed to feel annoyed that a group of men decided it was more important to nitpick a woman's story than to feel sympathy or outrage at her mistreatment.

    It's not an obvious stance and it's laughable when men assert this. If it was an obvious stance, we'd be working harder to eliminate these types of egregious and horrific treatments of women.

    Instead there's more comments about the odd pacing of a brief retelling of the victim's work history.

    Shame.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    I don't see how I misread the article. I believe the article is unclear and the bit about the taxi job is open to interpretation. I did not jump to conclusions about the interviewee's work history. I stated how I interpreted what the article says about her work history. The article may or may not accurately reflect reality and may or may not accurately reflect the interviewee's telling of her work history.

    I never said you weren't allowed to feel a certain way. I stated what you did and how that affected the thread's trajectory. Do you think I said you weren't allowed to feel a certain way? I don't get why you're bringing it up.

    And pardon me for assuming that the stance of most of the people who responded to this post was the obvious stance.

    Clarification: are you more upset because you think I'm a man? I have been on the internet since the 90s and, as we all know {joke} there were no girls on the internet in the 90s.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    I read that section of the article and wasn’t confused about her general retelling of her work history and favorite jobs. The idea that only people above 18 work is preposterous. Especially when the article detailed that she was already a skilled laborer by the age of 14.

    No, I was simply stating how I felt about it because I think it’s a damn shame that the real story here got obfuscated by a hyper focus on a small detail.

    Apologies on the assumption, Lemmy is so overwhelmingly male and misogynistic that it’s easy to miss the rare woman here.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Fair.

    I was really only confused about the "Her favorite job was working as a taxi driver for 15 years." Everything else made sense, that just felt like a bad phrasing on the reporter's part. Other jobs, I was replacing shingles on my family's buildings at 15, folding boxes under the table for a local bakery before then.

    No hard feelings? TBH, I should have disengaged sooner because I felt myself going down the "maybe if I overexplain my stance they'll agree with me and everyone'll be happy" rabbit hole, when I should have figured out that we were talking past each other. Like, it felt so... yeah, no, the events in the article are messed up. Clearly if I feel that so strongly everyone else can read my mind and knows that without me saying anything [spoiler alert: people can't read my mind]. Then I fixated on the detail of the date and you maybe thought that was all anyone in the thread was taking away from the article, which didn't help anything.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 5 months ago (14 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago (13 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (4 children)

    What does this have to do with anything?

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    It means that she wasn't lying and it's plausible that she was driving a taxi before the age of 18.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Sure, you believe whatever you need to reinforce your preexisting beliefs.

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  • [–] [S] -1 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I've been on Lemmy long enough to be aware of the pervasive anti-women culture here.

    You couldn't even express a single word of sympathy. Just nitpicking and casting her as untrustworthy.

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  • [–] [S] -2 points 5 months ago* (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (5 children)

    I spent 2 seconds pointing out bad reporting by cnn, im not trying to attack her. That detail adds nothing to the story but doubt, why include it?

    Now I did waste more time trying to explaing gradeschool math to someone who is blindly defending someone they dont know from imagined attacks.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    It was the only point in the entire story that you felt was worthy of discussion. Why is that?

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (3 children)

    That detail adds nothing to the story but doubt, why include it?

    As I said, that line stuck out to me as bad reporting because all it does is cast doubt and doesn't help the story. You seem to have convinced yourself that I am the enemy and that I am calling her a liar, but that is not the case.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    You missed the point of the article/story. You ignored this woman's plight to nitpick about her employment years.

    You derailed the conversation about women being charged for miscarriages to complain about a small error.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    What world do you live in where every comment must express you point of view preemptively to not be considered an attack?

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I would love to be able to afford kids. They really have become a status symbol at this point.

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