A Pennsylvania woman has been charged with concealing the death of an unborn child after police found the body of a baby in her car during a traffic stop.
According to the Times Leader, Mikayla Rose Sando, 25, was stopped for a vehicle violation by state police in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on May 18, 2023. She was suspected of driving under the influence and during the stop, troopers saw drug packaging materials inside her car. Sando gave consent for the police to search the car, which led to the discovery of her deceased baby boy in a bowl inside a plastic bag.
During her interview with state police, Sando said that when she learned she was pregnant at 16 weeks, she planned to go to Planned Parenthood in Allentown, Pennsylvania, for an abortion — a Planned Parenthood with a history of non-compliance with the law. For unknown reasons, she ordered ‘a pill’ to abort the baby instead of obtaining a surgical abortion, and allegedly gave birth to a stillborn son at her residence while she also used cocaine, methamphetamine, and fentanyl.
An autopsy found that the baby boy was about 21 to 22 weeks gestation. Babies have survived being born this prematurely, including Baby Jemarius, and Baby Curtis.
Sando told police she intended to flush the baby boy’s body down the toilet but realized he was too big, so she put him in the plastic bag and into her car, where she kept him for days.
A preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 22.
Abortion is legal in Pennsylvania through 23 weeks, but widespread, easy access to the abortion pill has created dangerous situations like Sando’s. The abortion pill is only approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, but women can order the abortion pill online or through certain abortion businesses without undergoing a physical exam with a doctor. The abortion industry used the Covid-19 pandemic to push through its “no-test” abortion pill protocol after the Biden Administration removed safety restrictions that had been in place on the drug mifepristone for decades — despite the fact that non-fatal adverse events were no longer required to even be reported. Mifepristone is the first drug in the two-drug abortion pill regimen and it works by depriving the baby of nutrients.
Taking the abortion pill in the second trimester can cause “serious adverse maternal events,” according to research. Those complications include retained placenta that requires surgical removal, hemorrhaging requiring blood transfusions, uterine rupture, and hysterectomy. The later into her pregnancy that a woman takes the abortion pill, the less effective it is, creating the possibility of delivering a premature baby who needs medical attention that he likely won’t receive.
Stories such as Sando’s have been increasingly frequent in the media since access to the abortion pill has been simplified. Bodies of babies have been found in apartment building plumbing, pipes, and toilets. Multiple women have shared heartbreaking stories of holding their babies after taking the abortion pill and flushing their babies’ bodies. They have told of how traumatic it was to take the abortion pill and see their babies, which may be true for Sando and her experience as well.
