West Virginia prosecutor warned his colleagues could charge women for miscarriages. He didn't say they actually will

Yahoo

07-06-2025

In late May and early June 2025, a rumor spread online that West Virginia prosecutors planned to start issuing felony charges against women who have miscarriages.
This claim is misleading. It comes from a misunderstanding of comments made by Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney Tom Truman, who wished to warn people that it may be possible for prosecutors to charge people who miscarry using state laws governing disposal of human remains. However, Truman emphasized that he does not personally want to or plan to prosecute anyone under these conditions.
West Virginia law does not explicitly state that fetal remains are equivalent to human remains. The state treats fetuses as "distinct victims" in "certain crimes of violence," but it does not have a law giving fetuses the same total legal rights as people. Furthermore, prosecutors have broad discretion and authority to decide on bringing charges and how to pursue a case. Thus, it is possible a West Virginia prosecutor could try to charge someone for the disposal of fetal remains after a miscarriage, but it is difficult to determine whether the charge would hold up in court.
In late May and early June 2025, a rumor spread online that West Virginia prosecutors would begin charging women who have miscarriages with crimes.
The claim spread on platforms including X, Facebook, Threads and Reddit. Some posts specified that a miscarriage starting at nine weeks of pregnancy would result in a felony charge; many attributed the information to Raleigh County Prosecuting Attorney Tom Truman.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1043691187320222
However, this claim is misleading, as it comes from a misunderstanding of Truman's comments to West Virginia news station WVNS, in which he said a prosecutor in the state might, in theory, file criminal charges against people who miscarried using laws governing disposal of human remains. Truman told Snopes he does not personally believe prosecuting people for disposal of fetal remains after a miscarriage is appropriate and he does not know of any prosecutors who have concrete plans to do so.
"I was just trying to send out a warning to people," Truman said in a phone call.
The West Virginia Prosecuting Attorneys Institute said in an email that it does not offer legal advice and thus cannot comment on whether West Virginia law would allow such prosecutions, but its executive director, Jim Samples, said he had not received any inquiries on the subject since he started there in mid-December 2024.
Snopes also reached out to the national Association of Prosecuting Attorneys and the National District Attorneys Association to inquire whether these organizations have reason to believe West Virginia prosecutors may begin charging people who have miscarriages for improper disposal of human remains. We await their responses.
In a May 30, 2025, interview with West Virginia news station WVNS, Truman said he heard a number of prosecuting attorneys discussing their willingness "to file criminal charges against women in pregnancy loss situations by using state law related to the disposal of human remains."
While Truman confirmed the accuracy of the interview, he clarified that the conversation with these attorneys occurred "years ago," before the Supreme Court reversed the federal right to an abortion under Roe v. Wade in 2022.
"Some of the really anti-abortion prosecutors were looking for about anything they could find," Truman said. "Comments were made casually, and at the time it got my attention, but it didn't really mean much before Roe was overturned."
But then Roe fell — and West Virginia began enforcing its near-total ban on abortion. Truman also pointed to language in the West Virginia Code, passed by the state Legislature, defining fetuses and embryos as "separate and distinct" victims from the pregnant person for "certain crimes of violence," as well as a 2016 West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals decision affirming the conviction of a woman for involuntary manslaughter, concealment of a deceased human body and other offenses related to the death of her 26-day-old infant son.
Per pages 16 and 17 of the decision, the woman helped law enforcement find the infant's grave site within 48 hours of his death — and an autopsy could not confirm cause of death. However, the state successfully argued that she still did not meet the requirements of West Virginia law on the "concealment of a deceased human body." The law requires a person to "affirmatively" notify law enforcement not only within 48 hours of concealing the body, but prior to being contacted by law enforcement in connection with the death.
Taken altogether, Truman said, he is concerned that "some of the people hell-bent on prosecuting folks" for miscarriages might do so by getting "creative" with case law and by using the broad powers of prosecutorial discretion, or the authority a prosecutor has to decide whether to file charges and what charges to file.
"All of a sudden, it became — what was pretty far-fetched became a possibility," Truman said.
Truman advised West Virginia residents to protect themselves from possible prosecution by immediately informing the relevant county prosecuting attorney's office or law enforcement when a miscarriage occurs.
There is some precedent to Truman's concerns, at least in other states. Snopes confirmed in April that police arrested a Georgia woman on charges of improper disposal and notification of a dead body after she miscarried and put the fetal remains in a dumpster. (The prosecutor's office later dropped the charges, according to reports.)
Furthermore, an organization called Pregnancy Justice found in a September 2024 report — see Page 2 — that at least 210 people have faced criminal charges related to pregnancy, pregnancy loss and birth, and that 22 of those cases involved "a fetal or infant demise and allegations regarding conduct concerning pregnancy, pregnancy loss, or birth."
However, West Virginia, unlike Georgia and similar states with anti-abortion laws, does not have a broad fetal-personhood law as of this writing — a legislative attempt to pass one in 2024 stalled. Fetal personhood is the idea that a fetus has the same legal rights as a person; not having a fetal-personhood law makes it less likely that West Virginia law on human remains is considered applicable to fetal remains.
Furthermore, West Virginia law does not penalize patients who receive abortions, only the people who perform the operation — and another state law explicitly states that a miscarriage is not an abortion. An attorney with Pregnancy Justice, Kulsoom Ijaz, told WVNS, the same outlet Truman spoke to, that while she believes West Virginia law bars prosecutors from charging a woman in relation to her own abortion or miscarriage, "there are countless unjust and unfounded prosecutions every day in this country."
Some claims said that West Virginia prosecutors would begin charging people whose miscarriages happened just nine weeks into a pregnancy. That rumor appeared to be based off a line in the WVNS story: "Truman added that women who miscarry at nine weeks or later could potentially face charges."
This timeline, Truman said in an email to Snopes, came from the state law, which recognizes an embryo or fetus as a "distinct unborn victim." Under that law, a fetus is, by definition, a developing human "eight weeks after fertilization or ten weeks after the onset of the last menstrual period" — in other words, around nine weeks. He also pointed to a state law that provides definitions for "fetal death."
But none of the laws Truman referenced explicitly states that fetal remains are equal to human remains under state law, meaning it is difficult to determine whether a prosecutor could successfully bring a case applying laws about the disposal and notification of human remains to fetal remains.
To summarize, while at least one prosecuting attorney in West Virginia said he believes other prosecutors in the state could find a way to charge a person who had a miscarriage in relation to the disposal of fetal remains, the law did not, at the time of this writing, explicitly endorse this belief — nor was there any indication that prosecutors in West Virginia had active plans to pursue such cases.
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