Nevada's Unique Abortion Law and Patience Rousseau's Settlement

Nevada’s ban on taking drugs to end a pregnancy after the 24th week makes it the only state left in the nation that explicitly criminalizes abortions, advocates say, and legislative efforts last year to change that fell flat.

Patience Rousseau was the only person ever charged and convicted under the law, according to Laura FitzSimmons, a Carson City-based lawyer who has represented her since 2020. FitzSimmons helped get Rousseau’s conviction vacated in 2021 for ineffective assistance of counsel.

Now Nevada will pay Rousseau $100,000 for her ordeal, a settlement approved without comment during last Tuesday’s meeting of the Board of Examiners — a panel consisting of the governor, the attorney general and the secretary of state.

The compensation marks the conclusion of an eight-year fight that upended Rousseau’s life and brought national attention to a Nevada law that abortion advocates describe as uniquely punitive toward women who want to end their pregnancy.

“Even in the states with the most draconian abortion bans, there is language explicitly saying that a person who has an abortion has not committed a crime,” said lawyer and abortion rights advocate Farah Diaz-Tello. “Not Nevada.”

In 2018, 26-year-old Rousseau, then going by the name Patience Frazier, was living in Winnemucca when she delivered a stillborn baby, whom she named Abel and whose remains she buried in her backyard.

Forty days later, Rousseau was arrested and charged with felony manslaughter. Her charges stemmed from a law on the books in Nevada since 1911, stating that a woman who ingests drugs with the intent to terminate a pregnancy past 24 weeks has committed manslaughter.

Rousseau told The Indy last Tuesday she was grateful for the money but had “lost a lot of hope that I’m still struggling to get back.” She said she struggles with trauma from the case and faces community stigma.

When she learned she was pregnant in 2018, Rousseau was not sure how far along she was. She scheduled an abortion in Reno, but a broken-down car prevented her from reaching the appointment. Searching the internet for advice on how to naturally end an unwanted pregnancy, she began to consume copious amounts of cinnamon and lift heavy objects.

Prosecutors could not prove that those actions, which are not scientifically linked to pregnancy issues, caused Rousseau’s miscarriage.

But Rousseau struggled with substance use disorder and had ingested methamphetamines and marijuana during her pregnancy. Prosecutors argued she took those drugs to induce a miscarriage, thus violating the state’s law.

At the encouragement of her public defender, Rousseau pleaded guilty to the manslaughter charges and went to prison in 2019. Her conviction was vacated in 2021 for ineffective assistance of counsel and her case was officially dismissed in 2025.

Nevada’s ban on inducing a miscarriage makes it “the only state where it is a felony to have an abortion,” said Diaz-Tello. She said other states criminalize women’s behavior during and after pregnancy in less explicit ways.

In last year’s legislative session, bill SB139 would have overturned the statute but died without receiving a hearing in the Democrat-controlled Legislature.

The New Republic reported that Senate Democratic leadership, along with some of the state’s pro-choice groups, opted against lobbying for the bill because they wanted to focus efforts on a ballot measure to enshrine abortion rights up to 24 weeks in the state Constitution.

Voters approved the measure, Question 6, by nearly a two-thirds majority in November 2024 but must approve it again this November before it is amended to the state Constitution.

Sen. Rochelle Nguyen (D-Las Vegas), who introduced SB139, wrote in a statement to The Indy that she supported the change “because I believe Nevada’s legal system shouldn’t punish women for their medical situations or pregnancy outcomes.”

Nguyen also wrote that “making laws can be complicated, and not every bill passes.”

Abortions are legal in Nevada for any reason through 24 weeks of gestation, after which they are only permitted if the life or health of the pregnant person is endangered. The state is one of 28 states where abortion restrictions depend on how far along the pregnancy is.

But most states that ban abortions after a certain date penalize doctors for performing late-term procedures, rather than the women seeking them.

Some states find other ways to punish women for abortions, through laws banning child abuse, concealing a birth or taking drugs during pregnancy.

Diaz-Tello said that in those other states, punishing women for getting abortions means prosecutors must invoke unrelated or adjacent statutes or charge women with separate offenses.

“Nevada is now the only state with a law on its books explicitly criminalizing ending one’s pregnancy,” she said.

A September 2025 report by the reproductive health care advocacy group Pregnancy Justice counted 412 pregnancy-related prosecutions in the two years after Roe v. Wade fell. Of these cases, only nine involved allegations related to obtaining an abortion or abortion medication.

The state’s abortion rights advocates have long hailed the 1911 statute as outdated and unjust, arguing it punishes women who cannot access reproductive health care because of geographic restrictions, income barriers or social pressure.

“In these rural counties where we do not have abortion medical care … if a woman has a drug problem, she’s not going to go get help if she’s pregnant,” said FitzSimmons. She also said the law could theoretically be used to charge women who take legal abortion pills past 24 weeks.

Rousseau told The Indy that her manslaughter conviction was a devastating punishment for a period in her life when she needed help most of all.

Many young women want abortions because “they don’t feel like they can care for another child,” Rousseau said, “whether it’s their living situation, their financial situation, they’re struggling or barely making it by with what they have.”

She said the state should invest more in affordable housing, mental and physical health care, and in demonstrating to young moms that “there’s someone out there that’s willing to help, that’s not judging you.”

After serving more than two years in prison, a Nevada district judge vacated Rousseau’s conviction in 2021, deeming her original counsel ineffective.

Her lawyer by then was FitzSimmons, an attorney for indigent clients who helped secure Nevadans’ reproductive rights in a 1990 referendum.

FitzSimmons successfully argued that the prosecution could not prove Rousseau’s drug use caused her miscarriage or that she took the drugs to induce miscarriage. The lawyer also argued that Rousseau, who was unsure when she got pregnant, could not have known she passed the 24-week threshold for legal abortion.

After a judge vacated her conviction in 2021, Rousseau moved to South Dakota. Soon she had another child, a boy turning 4 this year.

Rousseau told The Indy that she has a stable job but as a single mom, still struggles with paying rent and juggling her three sons’ schedules for school. Her neighbors know about her past, she said, and many of them still think of her as the woman who killed her child.

Last Tuesday’s settlement was a relief, Rousseau said, but only a temporary one.

“What does it really mean for me? How long is it going to last? I can cushion everything, but it’s not going to fix my problems,” she said.