By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2026-10-09 17:46:41 | Updated at 2026-10-09 18:38:22
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A once-homeless Nevada mom who spent two years in prison when her miscarriage was blamed on her heavy drug use has been awarded a life-changing $1.6 million settlement.
Patience Rousseau, 34, was the only person ever convicted under an obscure 1911 state law that prohibits women from ending a pregnancy after the 24th week through drug use — one her lawyer noted was “on the books before women were even allowed to vote in Nevada.”
The mom — who admitted trying unproven home remedies to try to end her pregnancy — served two years in prison, starting in 2019, before her manslaughter conviction was vacated in 2021.
Nevada initially agreed to pay Rousseau $100,000 — before her lawyers finally won her $1.6 million.
She was given $1.2 million last week — with the rest going to legal fees — which she plans to use to pay off her new house in South Dakota as well as buy her mom a car and open a store selling rare aquatic plants and animals, she told the Nevada Independent.
“They fought so much to avoid paying me,” she complained. “I went through so much and so did my children, who are still facing these issues. It’s not fair.”
Rousseau was 26 and living under the name Patience Frazier with her two young sons at the home of a suspected drug dealer in rural Winnemucca when she discovered she was pregnant again in 2018, according to The Nevada Independent.
Unable to travel 165 miles to Reno for an abortion, she looked up ways to end an unwanted pregnancy, and started lifting heavy things and consuming cinnamon, which she believed would help.
Two months later, she delivered a stillborn baby boy she named Able, and buried his remains in her yard.
“I’m so sorry Abel,” she wrote on Facebook next to a photo of the dead child’s makeshift grave. “I’m sorry I’m a horrible person I don’t deserve to continue after what I did.”
Investigators initially tried to connect the baby’s death to Rousseau’s cinnamon intake — a myth without scientific backing — but instead seized on her use of methamphetamine, cannabis and tobacco to convict her under the obscure law being used for the first time in 115 years.
However, her lawyers successfully argued that the longtime drug user did not know exactly when she became pregnant and hence when she was past the 24-week threshold.
Her lawyers also argued it was impossible to know if the miscarriage was caused by the mom’s drug use, or if she had abused drugs intending to end the pregnancy.
Rousseau says she is now sober and living in South Dakota with her three sons — ages 4, 7 and 9 — with another child living with an estranged relative.
“Instead of looking at everybody like they are a criminal, look at them like they have a chance in life with the right direction,” Rousseau said.
“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.”
About half of the states in the US have enacted total abortion bans or severe gestational limits following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
