In late March 2025, rumors spread online about a Georgia woman being arrested after she had a miscarriage.
Some social media users claimed the woman was arrested specifically for having a miscarriage, while others said she wasn't arrested for having a miscarriage but for putting a fetus' remains in a dumpster. Other versions of the claim appeared on Facebook and Bluesky. Numerous news
BREAKING: a 24 year old woman in Georgia has been arrested for having a miscarriage. A MISCARRIAGE. Police are saying she "concealed the remains of a dead body" because she didn't call them "fast enough."
This is the future republicans want for America— Men4Choice (@Men_4_Choice) March 27, 2025
Snopes readers also wrote in to ask whether a Georgia woman was either arrested for a miscarriage or arrested for "disposing of the fetus in a dumpster." Some readers asked for confirmation that the fetus underwent an autopsy.
It is true that police in Tifton, Georgia, arrested 24-year-old Selena Maria Chandler-Scott after she had a miscarriage and that a witness reported Chandler-Scott put the bagged remains of the fetus in a dumpster. Officials charged Chandler-Scott with counts related to concealing a death and throwing away or abandoning a dead body, according to a news release from the Tifton Police Department. In Georgia, a fetus has legal personhood, meaning fetuses receive the same legal protections that people do.
Chandler-Scott was not charged for the act of having a miscarriage but for her alleged actions afterward — although it is worth noting that it is
Hospitals and
Police acknowledged that emergency medical services determined she miscarried; still, officials sent the fetus for an autopsy "to determine cause of death" before charging Chandler-Scott. As of this writing, it has not yet been determined whether the area's prosecutor will take up this case or if the charges will be dismissed.
Here's what to know about the situation.
A timeline of the incident
On March 20, 2025, Tifton police said that "at approximately 6:00 AM" on that day, emergency medical services responded to a call about an "unconscious female who was bleeding." Here is the rest of the news release (emphasis ours):
Upon arrival, EMS determined that the woman had suffered a miscarriage earlier. She was immediately transported to Tift Regional Medical Center for treatment.
During the response, a witness reported that the mother had earlier placed the fetus in a bag and placed that bag in a dumpster outside. Tifton Police responded to the scene and recovered the deceased fetus. The remains were sent for an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
At this time, no charges have been filed as the investigation is active and ongoing. Authorities are awaiting autopsy results and conducting further interviews to determine the appropriate course of action.
On March 21, the police department published another news release announcing "the arrest and charges" of Chandler-Scott:
Scott has been arrested and charged with:
•One count of concealing the death of another person
•One count of throwing away or abandonment of a dead body prohibited
Tift County deputy coroner Blair Veazey said that an autopsy determined the fetus was at a gestational age of 19 weeks — a fact first reported by Georgia television station WALB. Veazey
"It was determined that the mom just had a natural miscarriage," the WALB News story read. For context, in 2021, the Guinness Book of World Records named a baby born at a gestational age of 21 weeks and one day the most premature baby to ever survive. That baby, born in July 2020, still holds the record as of this writing.
Tifton police had not released any other updates to the case as of this publication and did not immediately respond to a request for any updated information regarding the case. WALB News reported that Chandler-Scott's family put together a GoFundMe for financial support. The GoFundMe description said Chandler-Scott "recently had a miscarriage which led to a series of unfortunate events."
"In these sensitive moments of her life, it has caused not only her but her family emotional, financial, and mental stress," the description continued.
The grounds for arrest explained
Police appear to be charging Chandler-Scott under Georgia's Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, which passed in 2019 but was found unenforceable in 2020 by a federal court. After the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion under Roe v. Wade in 2022, court battles over the LIFE Act ensued, and the Georgia Supreme Court eventually reinstated the law in October 2024.
The LIFE Act is best known as Georgia's six-week abortion ban — but it also legally defines a fetus as a person (see line 63, page 19, in which the law defines a "natural person" as any human being "including an unborn child"). On lines 72 and 73, the law defines "unborn child" as "a member of the species Homo sapiens at any stage of development who is carried in the womb." According to Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit organization advocating for the rights of pregnant people, at least 11 states (see page 6) have broad so-called "fetal personhood" laws.
Due to this language, the LIFE Act's provisions make any laws that are applicable to a person equally applicable to a fetus — for example, the state determined that, per the LIFE Act, the Department of Revenue "will recognize any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat ... as eligible for the Georgia individual income tax dependent exemption" under dependent status because the child is legally a person. In Chandler-Scott's case,
The first law Chandler-Scott allegedly violated explicitly refers to "concealing the death of any other person." The punishment for concealing a death of a person is one to 10 years in prison or a fine between $1,000 and $5,000 — or both. The second law she was accused of violating states "any person who throws away or abandons any dead human body or portion of such dead body" will be subject to one to three years in prison. Notably, this law does not refer to a human body as a "person."
In fact, on March 31, Tift County district attorney Patrick Warren reportedly told WALB News that he could not comment on the case but did provide this statement (emphasis ours):
There is no specific Georgia statute or case law that addresses an individual's choice to dispose of a naturally miscarried, non-viable fetus as it is generally deemed a medical condition and prosecution is not warranted. Georgia courts have held that once a baby is 'born alive and has had an independent and separate existence from its mother' then what happens to the child (injury or death) can be subject to criminal prosecution.
Georgia does have a law on the proper disposal of aborted fetal remains, but that law does not mention fetal remains due to miscarriage. Similarly, a law on registering fetal deaths only governs what the relevant authority or physician should do, not the person who was pregnant. WALB News reported that Warren's office is waiting to receive the "completed case file" and will "determine whether to proceed, and, if so, for what charges." It was
Chandler-Scott is reportedly not the first person in the U.S. to be charged in relation to a miscarriage after the fall of Roe v. Wade. On page two of a September 2024 report by Pregnancy Justice, the organization said 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."