BEATTYVILLE, United States— A 35-year-old Kentucky woman is facing multiple serious criminal charges after police alleged she induced her own abortion using medication and buried the fetal remains in her backyard.
Kentucky State Police arrested Melinda S. Spencer on charges of first-degree fetal homicide, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with physical evidence, according to jail records and reports by the Lexington Herald-Leader.
Spencer was booked into the Lee County Detention Center in Beattyville on Thursday and remained in custody as of Friday evening.
Police allege that Spencer ordered abortion medication online to terminate her pregnancy and later buried the remains on her property.
Authorities have not disclosed how far along the pregnancy was at the time. However, investigators described the fetus as “developed,” a detail that has drawn particular scrutiny given Kentucky’s strict abortion laws.
Kentucky bans doctors from performing abortions at any stage after conception, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
However, the state does not explicitly criminalise people who self-manage their own abortions — a legal distinction that has become increasingly contentious as prosecutions tied to pregnancy outcomes rise across the United States.
Medical experts broadly agree that self-managed abortions using pills in the first trimester are safe and effective. Since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, ordering abortion pills online has become increasingly common.
By the end of 2024, roughly one in four abortions in the United States involved telehealth providers who consulted patients online and mailed abortion medication, according to data from the research group #WeCount. Tens of thousands of those abortions occurred in states with abortion bans.
Despite this, women have increasingly faced criminal consequences related to pregnancy losses, miscarriages, and stillbirths.
Researchers from the reproductive justice organisation Pregnancy Justice documented 412 prosecutions for pregnancy-related conduct in the two years following the fall of Roe.
Of those cases, 16 involved homicide charges, while seven involved allegations related to the handling of fetal remains.
Abortion rights advocates argue such prosecutions are part of a broader push to advance “fetal personhood,” a legal doctrine that treats embryos and fetuses as individuals with full legal rights — potentially placing them in conflict with the rights of pregnant women.
“The idea that the fetus can be a person and a victim of a crime is being wielded in significant ways when there’s a pregnancy loss,” Wendy Bach, a University of Tennessee law professor, told The Guardian in 2024. “Rather than meeting a pregnancy loss with care and support, we are meeting it with criminal suspicion and prosecution.”
Similar cases in other states have drawn widespread criticism. In Georgia, one woman was arrested after being found bleeding and unconscious following a miscarriage. In Ohio, another was arrested after miscarrying in a toilet. Both cases were later dropped.
In Spencer’s case, police reportedly became involved after she discussed her pregnancy with clinic staff. Pregnancy Justice has found that healthcare workers are often the source of police involvement in such cases: of the 412 prosecutions it identified, 264 were triggered by information disclosed in a medical setting.
An individual who answered the phone at Kentucky State Police headquarters said no official comment was available due to the recent holidays.
A jail official confirmed that Spencer had been advised by her attorney not to speak to the media or law enforcement. Attempts to reach her lawyer for comment were unsuccessful.
The case is expected to test the boundaries of Kentucky’s abortion laws and could set an important legal precedent on whether self-managed abortions can be prosecuted under existing homicide statutes.
As the matter proceeds through the courts, legal experts and rights advocates say it will be closely watched nationwide as states continue to grapple with the consequences of restrictive abortion policies.
