A Nevada woman who spent two years in prison after being accused of causing her own miscarriage has been awarded $1.6 million. The settlement closes a case that began with a pregnancy she felt unable to end and ended with a conviction that was later overturned.
Patience Rousseau was 26 in 2018. She was living with her two sons and struggling with drug addiction and homelessness when she found out she was pregnant. Travelling 165 miles to Reno for an abortion was not an option for her. Instead, she searched online for ways to end the pregnancy herself. She tried eating cinnamon and lifting heavy objects, believing either might cause a miscarriage.
Two months later, she gave birth to a stillborn baby boy. She named him Abel and buried him in her garden.
In 2019, Rousseau was found guilty of manslaughter under a Nevada law dating back to 1911. That law made it illegal for women to deliberately end a pregnancy after 24 weeks through drug use. She was the first person convicted under it, and she was sentenced to up to eight years in prison.
Her lawyers appealed. They argued there was no evidence that her drug use had caused the miscarriage, or that she had been taking drugs to end the pregnancy. They also said she had not known exactly how far along she was when she lost the baby.
The conviction was overturned in 2021, but only after Rousseau had already served two years behind bars.
She then sought compensation for her imprisonment. Nevada authorities initially agreed to pay her $100,000. Her lawyers kept fighting, and eventually secured a $1.6 million settlement. Rousseau received $1.2 million of that after legal fees were paid.
Speaking to The Nevada Independent, Rousseau, now 34, said the state had done everything it could to avoid paying her. “They fought so much to avoid paying me,” she said. “I went through so much and so did my children, who are still facing these issues. It’s not fair.”
Paola Armeni, the civil rights attorney who represented Rousseau in her settlement claim, described the experience in equally blunt terms. She said it was like being targeted by a lynch mob, “all the while under a statute that was on the books before women were even allowed to vote in Nevada.” Armeni added, “The trauma of all of it was pretty horrendous.”
Rousseau has no wish to return. “I don’t ever want to come back to Nevada again, or honestly ever see any of the people in Winnemucca again,” she said. “They ruined it for me.”
She plans to use the money to pay off her house in South Dakota, buy her mother a car and open a shop selling rare aquatic plants and animals. After years of fighting in court, it is a modest and hopeful set of plans, and it is worth noting that a settlement can repay money but cannot undo what happened to her or to her children.