Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.

Abortion opponents have long claimed that abortion bans aren’t meant to target pregnant people, but rather the providers who perform the abortions. Time and again, that has proven to be a lie. This time, the target is a teenager.

Just this month, an 18-year-old young woman in Durham, North Carolina, was arrested and charged with a litany of crimes for allegedly self-managing an abortion at 31 weeks “in an attempt to terminate her pregnancy early,” her arrest warrant states. We are not naming her here.

According to law enforcement, after she allegedly took medication abortion at 31 weeks, she sat down on the toilet and gave birth. Someone called 911 — it isn’t clear who — and emergency services arrived at the home. From there, her nightmare continued to escalate.

The News & Observer reports that the young woman has been charged with “assault inflicting serious bodily injury on an unborn child, assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill and negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury.”

These are serious felonies with years, even decades, of possible prison time accompanying them. This young woman, who only just turned 18 in June, is facing long-term incarceration for allegedly purchasing and using medication abortion — mifepristone and misoprostol, two medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration — to terminate her own pregnancy.

Abortion Is as American as Apple Pie

But it’s not clear what the crime actually is. Because the information about this case is from law enforcement, it is understandably suspect. We don’t know if she took medication abortion — the Durham police say that they were told by her partner that she did. There’s no way to prove that she took medication abortion at all, no test that will make clear that she took abortion pills. And even if she did, that isn’t illegal.

“Fundamentally, self-managing an abortion is not a crime,” Dana Sussman, senior vice president at Pregnancy Justice, told Truthout. “North Carolina has rejected fetal personhood, which means that you cannot convert laws around........

© Truthout