18-year-old Syeisha Johnson was 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 after allegedly taking the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol to end a pregnancy at 31 weeks in July. Her boyfriend was also arrested and charged with negligent child abuse.
Johnson found out she was pregnant at 20 weeks in June, and then ordered the abortion pills online to be shipped from Virginia. According to the police report: “On July 29, 2026 Ms. Johnson began having abdominal pain and sat down during the day to help with the pain. She sat on the toilet and gave birth to a child.”
Johnson turned 18 in June, meaning she was past the North Carolina requirement for minors to get parental permission for an abortion, however the state bans most abortions after 12 weeks.
Her story comes the same week a recording was released of a call between acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and faith leaders, where Blanche promised that the Trump administration would work to ban mail-order abortion pills nationwide.
She was 17 years old, found out she was pregnant at 20 weeks, and had to wait until she was legally an adult to do anything. Add in a lack of sex education and what the pills do specifically and you have a tragic case like this.
If abortion had been a legally viable option for her, this wouldn't have happened.
It's disgusting to post photos like this by the way. It's not her fault she didn't have options - it's the government's overreach into women's healthcare that is at fault here.
Pregnancy and birth are threats to a woman's life as a reminder.
At 20 weeks you're outside the range of an abortion pill. At 31 weeks you are way beyond that. She put her own life in danger doing this. I understand there are complications due to stupid state laws and age requirements and all the rest but this was a bad decision. A criminally bad decision.
Her life was in danger carrying the pregnancy to term as well.
This is entirely due to access to abortion being cut off by the state.
Yes. I totally agree. And the method she opted to fix it was outside the scope for the situation as it was more than twice as long in the pregnancy as the method is safe to use. This was a completely stupid and potentially fatal way to handle the situation.
We both understand why this happened. We both hate that the nann state made it possible or even inevitable. But we can't be blind to the incredibly stupid risk she took by using a method that had a real risk of killing her. One wrong and one stupid don't make a right.
Without robust sex education, it's very likely that this girl didn't know how mifepristone works, only that it is an abortion pill. Teenagers don't tend to make great decisions under pressure. She couldn't legally get the pills at all until she turned 18 years old.
She would have been able to have a safe abortion if it had been legally available.
This is entirely on the state in my opinion. Completely and entirely the government's fault here.
It sounds like you and I agree on the problem but you are intentionally failing to acknowledge my point about her "solution" being wrong. Which makes this a bad faith conversation not worth continuing.
What would a correct solution have looked like, in your opinion?
My opinion is: this should have been a decision involving a doctor, but the state made that impossible. Whether she made a bad decision or not, the state failed first, and I, personally, hold the failure of the state to a higher level of scrutiny than the failure of a pregnant teenager.
We all agree what got here there. No need to repeat that.
The correct solution would have been pretty much anything that didn't involve taking a drug that wasn't unsafe for how far along she was. No medical professional would have advised using that method at 31 weeks because they would have lost their license.
I disagree. I think it's worth repeating that the STATE failed. I think it's worth repeating that I hold the STATE to a higher degree of scrutiny than I hold a desperate teenager. The reason I think this should be repeated is that some people only understand policy in terms of rational people making rational decisions, when that describes absolutely no one who has ever lived.
The policy is bad, in part, because it will cause people to make mistakes.
I don't need every solution to be listed. I just want one specific solution that you think is the/a correct solution.
Yes. The state failed. In the rush for control of women's bodies they decided that human sacrifice with the goal of keeping women down was the right choice. Hopefully the backfire will come swiftly and this will all be reversed state by state and at the federal level with an actual amendment protecting women from this ever again.
That doesn't change that what she did could have killed her. As I said elsewhere here I'm not qualified nor in her shoes to know what she should or could have done. But there is a very real chance she could have killed herself doing this. It's okay to say you don't know the answer but one is obviously not the right one. Not everything can be known. And while I wouldn't presume to tell her what she should or could have done I would be very sure to have told her that she was risking her life by doing this. But if I were that involved I would have taken donations for gas money and gotten them out of state to someplace that could help.
To be clear, I'm not asking you to provide a "correct" solution because I don't know. YOU said someone was "intentionally failing to acknowledge [your] point about her “solution” being wrong."
You don't actually have a solution, and for you to pile blame onto someone who is already subjugated by a cruel government is just doubling the cruelty.
That's easy to say when we're talking about one specific person in one specific high profile case. How many times do you think this kind of thing has happened since 2022?
How about this... instead of patting yourself on the back for "would've done the right thing," when you already did nothing... you just... keep doing and saying nothing? Because you want these restrictive laws to be changed, right? You want this problem to have never been an option because she was able to just go to a doctor first, right?
Saying and doing nothing is more helpful for making that change, than you entering this conversation by blaming the victim of bad policy.
I didn't say I knew the right thing. I said they put their own life in danger by using a medication that wasn't meant to handle a 31 week pregnancy.
Some women would rather die than give birth to be perfectly honest.
So the correct solution was putting her own life in danger to save the fetus?
Yes, teenagers have poor decision making skills. I am not intentionally failing to acknowledge your point. I think your point doesn't matter in this case and I've spoken on that point a few times now.
She would have been able to have an abortion at a much safer time for both her and the fetus if it was accessible.
When the stupid was inflicted on purpose by the people doing the wrong to back the wrong, it pretty thoroughly absolves the victim. Unless you just like punishing girls.
Because I need to remind you, this was not a woman. This was a girl. She was a fucking child. Not that it really makes a difference to anyone not looking for a victim to string up.
I agree to most of what you said. But.
If you arrive at 31 weeks, regardless of how unfair and fucked up the circumstances where thad lead to this point, you shoudn't abort in my opinion.
Hell, i know it sucks. I am so fucking sry for the poor girl that has been brought into a situation like this by bigoted assholes that denied her a right to abortion and sex edd to prevent it in the first place.
But she had an option left. She had the option to go trough with it and give the baby away. And i know that sucks. But at that point, i personally think it would have been the more humane option.
I posted them to show why i think this way, not to shame the poor girl. I don't blame her, it is, as you pointed out, not her fault.
Going through with birth is more risky to the mother’s life than you want to acknowledge here.
She was a teenager.
That is a good point. I am looking at this from a european perspective and had means no costs and much lower maternal mortality rates. I aknowledge that the situation is complicated by this. It's just a fucked up situation either way.
Not as a "got ya" but just fyi, being a teenager of her age is not a risk factor in this case, but lessens the risk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternal_mortality_in_the_United_States
Edit: It still is risking a live vs. taking a live tough.
Women shouldn't be forced to put their own lives at risk to carry a fetus to term.
The criminal actions here are the government's refusal to allow appropriate healthcare access to women.
I agree. They realy shoudn't.
But we are talking about a fetus that is 6 weeks from being born here. By my account, that is a living being.
Even in most liberal countries you can't abort past 21 weeks without a medical reason to do so.
I won't and wouldn't force anybody to put their own live at risk. But considering that ending another live is the alternative here, i think it would be the best choice do make in a case like this, in my opinion.
It wasn’t this teenager’s first option to abort at 31 weeks either.
Edit: You’re talking past a really big point here. If abortion had been accessible, this teenager wouldn’t have made the choice to abort at 31 weeks. She would have done so right when she found out she was pregnant at 20 weeks. Hell, maybe with better sex education, she would have better prevented this unwanted pregnancy to begin with and no one would have been in this position.
But that didn’t happen. And the choice was try to abort or face death and an unwanted child with birth.
From the same link you pulled that chart.
So, I've never been pregnant, but you obviously haven't either. You do not understand or care about the risks and costs associated. You're just here to punish AFAB people for being too old for you to fuck.
If you actually cared about the lives of children, you'd be on /fuckcars. You'd be fighting against environmental contaminants that disproportionally kill children. You'd be punishing paid trained equipped cops for not stopping school shooters, you would've fucking suicide bombed the fucking uvalde police department for not letting concerned parents try to eave their kids.
You don't give a shit about the lives of children. That's the common thread between all of those things, you see; children die in preventable ways, people nobody can argue are children, because they're running around putting crap in their mouths and asking stupid questions and learning to read. No you hate women (and nb's and trans people when you think of then) and want them to suffer for committing a sin.
I have kind of a headache and I woke up really early, but just for you I'm going to have sex with at least three people tonight. I know at least one of them has a dick and at least one of them has a pussy and its going to be all your fault. The two I know are kind of annoying so I'm going to need to keep them from talking one way or another.
I'm sorry to hear about your headache. Maybe the sex can help you relax a bit more. You come across as a bit tense.
I just don't like Nazi pedophiles who think I'm an object. They kind of get on my nerves, you know? I guess I'm just the kind of shit head who wants the world to be better instead of worse.