Greenville Woman Arrested for Taking Abortion Pills

Yesterday The State reported that a woman in Greenville was arrested for taking abortion medication. In 2021, she went to St. Francis Hospital seeking help, and told the medical staff that she had taken abortion pills. The Greenville County Coroner’s office reported her to the Greenville Police, who issued a warrant for her arrest in 2022. She was arrested earlier this week and released on $2500 bond.

This is alarming on so many levels, not least of which is that we now know our city police department will arrest women for self-managing abortions. In other states, police have used digital records to charge women, so people here should be especially vigilant if they buy abortion pills online. Remember that taking the drugs yourself can mean up to two years of jail time, and supplying the drugs to others if you are not a physician could mean up to five years in prison. A self-managed abortion is indistinguishable from a miscarriage and no one in South Carolina should report their self-managed abortions to medical staff.

This is direct proof that we can’t trust that law enforcement or local prosecutors will look the other way and ignore an unjust law. It is entirely possible that people in these positions of power are anti-abortion activists themselves, like this group that recently showed up at the Greenville Women’s Clinic, and tried to push women out of their way in an attempt to set up ladders around the fenced perimeter, so they could perch on top with bullhorns to harass patients. Abortion Access Front posted a video of the encounter on Twitter. It’s disturbing to watch entitled “Christian” white men hurt people so they can scream at women.

Abortion Access Front @AbortionFront

Watch to see how dangerous the creeps at Operation Save America are as AAF defends the only independent abortion clinic in South Carolina. If this violence feels familiar to you, it could be because the leader of OSA was proudly at the Capitol on January 6th.

A reminder too that Catholic hospitals restrict reproductive rights, if we need any more evidence of how religious groups impose their theological beliefs on the majority. This report from the ACLU is a good deep dive. If you have a choice, the Prisma hospital system in Greenville is not Catholic.

Infographic from the ACLU.

In the context of South Carolina legislators debating last month whether women should be charged with homicide (and subject to the death penalty) for having an abortion, we should take these actions against women very seriously and be sure to protect ourselves and others. Please also remember that these types of laws disproportionally affect poor women and women of color, who have already faced criminal prosecution for supposedly endangering fetuses with drugs (good coverage here from NPR).

The Abortion Defense Fund just launched, if you need legal advice.