CNN is sharing the story of a woman who faced charges following the death of her newborn baby in March of 2023 in South Carolina. This week, a grand jury in Orangeburg, South Carolina, declined to indict Amari Marsh on murder charges. Questions remain about the case, however, the media is attempting to place blame for Marsh’s arrest on the state’s pro-life laws — which weren’t in effect at the time.
The article was originally published by KFF Health News; as previously noted by Live Action News, “KFF [Kaiser Family Foundation] is heavily pro-abortion and Kaiser’s own website lists multiple pro-abortion philanthropists as ‘funders,’ including the Gates and Buffett Foundation.”
Amari Marsh, 21, was arrested and charged with homicide in March of 2023 after she gave birth on a toilet at home after leaving a hospital hours earlier of her own accord, without being discharged by medical personnel, according to an article from the Times-Democrat published at the time of Marsh’s arrest. The article says she left because “the energy in the room was off and she felt uncomfortable.” She went into labor at 3 am the next morning in her bathroom, and called 911 shortly thereafter. When EMS arrived, the baby was in the toilet, covered with used toilet tissue. EMS tried to save the baby girl, who had shown signs of life, but she was pronounced dead upon arrival to the hospital.
According to the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office incident report, Marsh’s boyfriend was also present inside the home at the time, but it does not indicate whether he was asleep or awake, or if he had any involvement. That report also states:
Marsh advised in November 2022 she was aware that she was pregnant.
Marsh advised in January 2023 she made an appointment with Plan Parenthood [sic] in Columbia, SC to take the Plan-C pill which would possibly cause an abortion to occur.
Marsh advised she was supposed to have a follow-up appointment to make sure the pill worked but never went back.
Marsh advised on 2/28/23 she was experiencing pains in her abdomen and responded to RMC.
Despite this report, Marsh later claimed that she never visited Planned Parenthood.
The report notes that Marsh says she spent about four hours at the hospital. But other details seem more difficult to piece together.
EMS Supervisor Sherron Washington told the deputy she had personally “responded to the incident location for the medical call” with two other medics. Washington said that Marsh had been “transported to RMC earlier by EMS and upon arrival, she jumped from the stretcher and ran away from the location.” Washington added that “Marsh was asked several times to remove the infant from the toilet but when they arrived, the infant was still located inside of the toilet…. When they removed the infant from the toilet the infant was covered in used toilet tissue.”
The report states that Marsh asked the deputy at that time if the incident was under investigation, and told him “that she did not feel as though she did anything wrong.”
Key Facts:
- According to the incident report, Amari Marsh was aware that she was pregnant and had obtained the abortion pill at some point between four and eight weeks prior to the birth of her child.
- Marsh told police she had not followed up with Planned Parenthood to ensure the abortion pill had worked. Later, she changed her story and claimed she never visited Planned Parenthood.
- Marsh visited a hospital but left of her own accord, and hours later gave birth at home on the toilet. She called 911 but failed to follow the dispatcher’s repeated instructions to remove the baby from the toilet. Marsh stated she was “scared” and “didn’t know what was going on.”
- Despite media and politicians’ false attempts to blame pro-life laws, the office handling Marsh’s prosecution claimed it “had nothing to do with” abortion-related laws in the state.
- Abortion was legal in South Carolina through 22 weeks gestation for the entirety of Marsh’s pregnancy. The state’s current ‘heartbeat law’ didn’t pass until a few weeks later.
- South Carolina’s abortion law does not allow women to be prosecuted for obtaining abortions, regardless of gestational age.
- The grand jury ultimately determined that there wasn’t probable cause to proceed with a criminal trial.
The Full Story
In November 2022, while a student at South Carolina State University, Marsh had a positive pregnancy test. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I didn’t want to let my parents down. I was in a state of shock.”
She was still having her period — and therefore, didn’t seek any prenatal care, thinking that perhaps her pregnancy test was wrong.
But then, two months later in January 2023, she — according to the police incident report — made an appointment at Planned Parenthood in Columbia to take a “Plan-C pill,” which is another name for the abortion pill regimen (mifepristone and misoprostol). While the abortion pill has a chance of failure, especially later in pregnancy, its function isn’t meant to just “possibly” cause an abortion as the incident report claimed.
Despite that police report, Marsh denies that she went to Planned Parenthood.
On February 28, 2023, Marsh said she began having abdominal pain that was “way worse” than menstrual cramps — so intense that she went to the ER, but she left without being treated. At home, the pain intensified so much that she returned to the hospital by ambulance.
At the hospital, she said staff crowded around her but no one would tell her what was happening. The sheriff’s department said Marsh was told by hospital staff that she was pregnant — and Marsh chose to leave the hospital a second time, claiming that her pain had subsided. (It is unknown if this was what was described in the EMS supervisor’s statement that Marsh “jumped from the stretcher and ran away from the location.”)
But in the middle of that night (March 1, 2023), the pain returned, and Marsh felt the need to use the bathroom. It was there that she gave birth to her premature daughter on the toilet. “And when I did, the child came,” she said. “I screamed because I was scared, because I didn’t know what was going on.”
Conflicting reports say either Marsh or her boyfriend called 911 (though the police incident report states that Marsh called), and the dispatcher reportedly told Marsh “to take the baby out” of the toilet. Marsh did not follow those instructions.
“I couldn’t,” she said, “because I couldn’t even keep myself together.” She said she was panicking — an indication that she may not have been thinking clearly. It’s possible she had been in denial about being pregnant.
First responders arrived, found the baby in the toilet covered by used toilet tissue, and took the baby out of the toilet; they noticed signs of life, but the baby did not survive.
Following a three-month long investigation, Marsh was arrested on June 2, 2023. According to KFF Health News and CNN, the arrest warrant noted that not removing the baby girl from the toilet despite the dispatcher’s instructions was “a proximate cause of her daughter’s death” — the primary cause.
The warrant also cites the cause of death as “respiratory complications” from premature delivery, due to a maternal chlamydia infection.
It is unclear at this time what role, if any, that the abortion pill may have played in the premature birth of Marsh’s baby girl.
Abortion in South Carolina
KFF Health News and CNN claimed Marsh’s case “raises questions about the state of reproductive rights in this country” — yet from the time when Marsh learned she was pregnant until her daughter’s birth occurred, abortion was legal in South Carolina through 22 weeks gestation.
In August of 2022, three months before Marsh took the pregnancy test, the South Carolina Supreme Court blocked the state’s law protecting preborn children from abortion once a heartbeat can be detected — at about six weeks — keeping abortion legal through 22 weeks. In January of 2023, the South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the ‘heartbeat’ law was unconstitutional.
It wasn’t until a few weeks after Marsh gave birth that the state again passed the ‘heartbeat law,’ which still stands today.
Notably, the law does not allow women to be prosecuted for obtaining an abortion, even after six weeks.
Yet Dana Sussman, senior vice president of the nonprofit Pregnancy Justice, claimed Marsh’s case is a “prime example of how pregnancy loss can become a criminal investigation very quickly.” She added, “The Dobbs decision unleashed and empowered prosecutors to look at pregnant people as a suspect class and at pregnancy loss as a suspicious event.”
Likewise, U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, claimed Marsh’s case is an example of how pregnancy loss is being criminalized following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
But the terminology used here by pro-abortion groups and politicians is dishonest and inaccurate, because Marsh did not experience a “pregnancy loss” and abortion was not prohibited in South Carolina at the time. She gave birth to a premature, but living, baby, likely at or after five months, according to the timeline. The investigation found that the baby died as a result of being left in the toilet and from respiratory complications due to preterm birth.
In fact, Solicitor David Pascoe, a Democrat elected to South Carolina’s 1st Judicial Circuit, and whose office handled Marsh’s prosecution, said abortion laws were not relevant in Marsh’s case.
“It had nothing to do with that,” he said.
‘Pregnancy Outcomes’
Marsh’s case highlights the concerns that exist around pro-abortion laws enacted in California, Michigan, and Colorado, which include the term “pregnancy outcomes.” The vague wording is undefined by the laws, and could encompass situations like birth, miscarriage, abortion, and even death after birth.
For example, Colorado’s HB22-1279 states (emphasis added):
The act prohibits state and local public entities from… :
- Depriving, through prosecution, punishment, or other means, an individual of the individual’s right to act or refrain from acting during the individual’s own pregnancy based on the potential, actual, or perceived impact on the pregnancy, the pregnancy’s outcomes, or on the pregnant individual’s health.
Similarly, Michigan’s Prop 3 prohibits the state from “penaliz[ing], prosecut[ing], or otherwise tak[ing] adverse action against an individual based on their actual, potential, perceived, or alleged pregnancy outcomes.” In other words, the state is prevented from filing charges against anyone because of a “pregnancy outcome.”
The danger here is that this term is vague and could be extremely problematic in cases where the death of a child is not accidental, but intended.
California’s Reproductive Health Act includes the term “pregnancy outcomes” as well, stating that “Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights under this article, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death due to a pregnancy-related cause.”
These laws fail to prosecute perpetrators of deliberate infanticide and/or intentional death by means of neglect, and open the door for situations like those in El Salvador, where cases of deliberate and violent infanticide are being mislabeled as pregnancy losses and stillbirths. Babies who died due to stabbing, strangling, and being thrown into septic tanks are being exploited to promote the legalization of induced abortion in El Salvador by groups like Planned Parenthood.
Abortion advocates in the United States appear to be using the tragic stories of women, whether abortion-related or not, to advance a pro-abortion agenda through misinformation.
