The mother was in shock that day in May 2018 as several law enforcement officers, some in tactical gear, stood outside the rural Winnemucca home to serve a search warrant.

“I had a miscarriage, OK? A miscarriage. Why are you guys here over a f**king miscarriage?” Rousseau responded to the deputy.

The single mother, who was already struggling to afford care for her two young boys, was dealing with complicated feelings of ambivalence and guilt about her unplanned pregnancy and stillbirth, her attorney said. Rousseau told the deputies she had been taking large quantities of cinnamon and lifting heavy things while pregnant “to have a miscarriage.”

Deputies walked to a cross that was painted red with Abel’s name written in black on a green plot behind the house, according to the police body camera footage and a police report. They dug up the remains and carried them to a law enforcement vehicle, the report said.

Two days later, Rousseau was arrested and charged with felony manslaughter before she was convicted in Nevada, where abortion is legal, under what legal experts say is a vague and broadly written statute that makes it a crime for any woman to take drugs with the intent to terminate a pregnancy. She was also charged with concealing birth, a misdemeanor, but was not convicted on that charge.

  • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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    7 days ago

    Before she went to prison, Rousseau’s life was defined by constant change – from the countless times she had moved to the jobs she worked.

    At 14 years old, she could insulate a house “better than most men” and assemble a roof in high heels, she said. As far as jobs go, Rousseau has done “pretty much everything,” including bartending, detailing cars and cleaning hotels and Airbnbs.

    Her favorite job was working as a taxi driver for 15 years because she could lend a sympathetic ear to passengers when they needed it most.

    But on the day law enforcement showed up on her doorstep, Rousseau says she was the one who needed that support.

    Oh you don’t understand paragraphs, I see.

    It doesn’t state that she started working at 14. By 14, she was a skilled laborer.

    • smh@slrpnk.net
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      7 days ago

      I’m just trying to figure out when she’d spent 15 years as a taxi driver, before the age of 26.

      26-15=11

      15+11=26

      Did she start as a taxi driver at age 11, or did she not work as a taxi driver for 15 years? I’m just not understanding the timeline.

      • fox2263@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        I think it was badly worded in the article, I believe she was a taxi driver at 15 years of age.

        • smh@slrpnk.net
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          6 days ago

          I think maybe “taxi driver” was her favorite job of the last 15 years. I agree that it’s just badly worded in the article.

          • fox2263@lemmy.world
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            6 days ago

            It’s just that the sentence before it was talking about the job she had at 14 so figured it was one after the next.

            • smh@slrpnk.net
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              6 days ago

              Yeah, but I can’t imagine using a 15 year old as my confidant. Then again, adults were telling me about their woes over the phone (I had a job calling people to tell them where to show for a phone book distribution gig).

              Hi, this is such and such company. Are you still interested in delivering phone books? Please show up at X sketchy parking lot to pick up your allotment.

              Oh, I can’t. I just had a miscarriage/license suspended for drunk driving/court date. Let me tell you more details because you’re Bad At Phone and Don’t Know How To End A Call and Free Therapy.

              (edit: typo and formatting)

              • fox2263@lemmy.world
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                6 days ago

                I imagine most conversations going along the lines of “so how long have you been driving for??” “Shouldn’t you be in school” etc

          • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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            6 days ago

            That’s exactly what the article was saying.

            I’m so glad that y’all debated whether she was lying about her jobs. Very worthy of all of our time here.

            • smh@slrpnk.net
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              6 days ago

              When did I ever say she was lying about her jobs? I said the timeline presented by the article didn’t make sense because it didn’t.

              A writer in need of an editor is different than an interviewee telling lies.

              • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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                6 days ago

                And it’s the only part of the entire story that you felt was worthy of discussing.

                This entire speculating thread just looks like ways to discredit the victim.

                • smh@slrpnk.net
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                  6 days ago

                  You jumped to insulting people’s reading skills when they questioned something that was unclear in the article (“Oh you don’t understand paragraphs, I see.”)

                  I responded because my numbers autism said “ah, I see. Velma doesn’t get how the math doesn’t math, let’s make that clear so the world is less confusing.”

                  If you’d just said “huh, yeah, the reporter could have worded that better” then this thread would have ended. Instead I think that you don’t care that the math doesn’t math and you’re viewing attempts to figure out what the reporter meant the convey as attempts to call the interviewee a liar. I hadn’t even considered that the interviewee might have been wrong about her life experience until you suggested it–it seems more likely that the reporter’s article was unclear, especially since the “15 years” bit wasn’t a direct quote.

                  I didn’t comment on anything else in the article because I didn’t think I had much to contribute on anything else. My stance is so obvious that what would I say on that that hasn’t already been said? Here: “yeah, that’s fucked up. I’m glad she’s no longer incarcerated. The USAian system has problems. This happened before the overturn of Roe v Wade‽ I can imagine how much worse a similar situation would be handled now”.

                  • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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                    6 days ago

                    You misread the article and immediately jumped to conclusions about her work history.

                    I’m allowed to feel annoyed that a group of men decided it was more important to nitpick a woman’s story than to feel sympathy or outrage at her mistreatment.

                    It’s not an obvious stance and it’s laughable when men assert this. If it was an obvious stance, we’d be working harder to eliminate these types of egregious and horrific treatments of women.

                    Instead there’s more comments about the odd pacing of a brief retelling of the victim’s work history.

                    Shame.

      • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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        7 days ago

        She was 26 when she was arrested. The article doesn’t say how old she was when she was recounting her work experiences to the journalist.

        • HootMcGoot@feddit.online
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          7 days ago

          If she was 26 in 2018 then she is around 34 now. 34-16 =18 years to be a taxi driver. -2 years in prison She could have done 15 years if she had been a taxi driver from 17-now, but who hires 17 year olds as taxi drivers?

          • Garbagio@lemmy.zip
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            7 days ago

            Bro have you ever traveled in America? Go to any airport in the country and you will see 15-20 local “taxi” services, a quarter of which run cash/venmo only.

              • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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                6 days ago

                It means that she wasn’t lying and it’s plausible that she was driving a taxi before the age of 18.

                  • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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                    6 days ago

                    I’ve been on Lemmy long enough to be aware of the pervasive anti-women culture here.

                    You couldn’t even express a single word of sympathy. Just nitpicking and casting her as untrustworthy.

          • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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            7 days ago

            Wish you spent half this energy for the actual bad people in this story instead of trying to prove that the victim lied about her work history.

            • HootMcGoot@feddit.online
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              6 days ago

              I spent 2 seconds pointing out bad reporting by cnn, im not trying to attack her. That detail adds nothing to the story but doubt, why include it?

              Now I did waste more time trying to explaing gradeschool math to someone who is blindly defending someone they dont know from imagined attacks.

              • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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                6 days ago

                It was the only point in the entire story that you felt was worthy of discussion. Why is that?

                • HootMcGoot@feddit.online
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                  6 days ago

                  That detail adds nothing to the story but doubt, why include it?

                  As I said, that line stuck out to me as bad reporting because all it does is cast doubt and doesn’t help the story. You seem to have convinced yourself that I am the enemy and that I am calling her a liar, but that is not the case.

                  • velma@lemmy.blahaj.zoneOP
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                    6 days ago

                    You missed the point of the article/story. You ignored this woman’s plight to nitpick about her employment years.

                    You derailed the conversation about women being charged for miscarriages to complain about a small error.