Nebraska Police Say Woman Improperly Handled Fetal Remains…That They Haven’t Seen

"While we don't have all the facts in this case, it appears that law enforcement doesn't either," Pregnancy Justice legal director Karen Thompson told Jezebel.

By Kylie Cheung | February 13, 2025 | 6:40pm

Photo: Google Maps Abortion Politics

Nebraska Police Say Woman Improperly Handled Fetal Remains…That They Haven’t Seen

Well, file this one under strange and incredibly concerning. Prosecutors for Nebraska’s Richardson County have charged a 30-year-old resident with unlawful disposal of human remains, a felony, and concealing a death, a misdemeanor—despite not seeing the remains themselves.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that the charges stem from a tip claiming that in October 2023, the woman, Taylor Rogers, had an abortion in her bathroom and kept the fetal remains in her trunk and then the witness’ trunk before eventually disposing of them. The unnamed witness claims the remains were those of a fully developed “baby.” Local authorities say they received these claims about Richards in May 2024. But I can’t stress this enough: No one but the informant even claims to have seen the remains—the felony charge against Rogers is only based on a tip. Sheriff Rick Hardesty told reporters that authorities have searched for but not found the remains in question.

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Richardson County Sheriff’s Deputy Nicholas Novak claims that, in July, he called Rogers to ask about the allegations, but she hung up, then texted him, “it was legal through and through.” In November, while Rogers was jailed on unrelated charges, investigators confronted her about the allegations that she’d improperly disposed of the remains of a fully formed baby; Novak claims that Rogers admitted to having been pregnant and had an abortion in her home in 2023, but disputed the other allegations.

Rogers was arrested on February 3. She’s scheduled to appear in county court on March 3, with bond set at $10,000.

“While we don’t have all the facts in this case, it appears that law enforcement doesn’t either,” Pregnancy Justice legal director Karen Thompson told Jezebel. “What we do know is women should not be criminalized based on shaky ‘tips’ without even a hint of alleged evidence. Time and again we see prosecutors turn to these kinds of charges involving the disposal of remains as a means to an end: to criminalize those the state deems to be a ‘bad woman.’ This isn’t about keeping people safe.”

There are many aspects of this case that are incredibly strange—namely, that it revolves around how Rogers allegedly handled her fetal remains, all while authorities have never seen the remains in question. But, unfortunately, criminal charges over fetal remains, pregnancy loss, and self-managed abortion aren’t out of the ordinary. Also in the fall of 2023, an Ohio woman named Brittany Watts faced felony charges for “abuse of a corpse” after having a miscarriage about 22 weeks into her pregnancy. This past October, the Washington Post reported the story of a Nevada woman who was charged with manslaughter and concealing a birth in 2018 for how she handled the fetal remains from her stillbirth; one of the officers who handled the case then took the remains for herself, calling them her “baby.” Very, very normal stuff!

In 2017, an Ohio teen was charged with aggravated murder, involuntary manslaughter, child endangering, and gross abuse of a corpse for burying a stillborn fetus in her backyard. In 2018, a Wisconsin woman faced similar charges for “improperly” disposing of stillborn twins, and in 2019, a Virginia woman was convicted and briefly jailed for “concealing a dead body” after disposing of remains from a stillbirth.

As Pregnancy Justice’s Dana Sussman told Jezebel in response to Watts’ case in 2023, “There is no handbook, no guide as to what one is supposed to do when they experience pregnancy loss.” There are no explicit rules or parameters for how to handle fetal remains, whether from a miscarriage, stillbirth, or self-managed abortion in one’s bathroom. So, these criminal charges are often entirely arbitrary.

Too many unanswered questions remain about Richardson County’s case against Taylor Rogers. But the charges against her—and under such odd circumstances, at that—come at a time of rising pregnancy-related criminal charges in the post-Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health era. Between 2006 and 2020, 1,300 people faced criminal charges for conduct associated with pregnancy, pregnancy loss, abortion, and birth. But in the first year after Dobbs, more than 200 people were arrested.