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Kansas Man Charged With First-Degree Murder for Inducing Girlfriend’s Miscarriage

According to prosecutors, Scott Bollig laced his girlfriend's pancakes with mifepristone, causing her to miscarry.

According to prosecutors, Scott Bollig laced his girlfriend's pancakes with mifepristone, causing her to miscarry. White pills via Shutterstock

A Kansas man will stand trial on first-degree murder charges after he allegedly laced his pregnant girlfriend’s pancakes with an abortion pill that caused her to miscarry.

Bollig reportedly confessed to crushing up the abortion-inducing medication mifepristone and mixing it into pancakes he served to Naomi Abbott, who was eight weeks pregnant at the time. According to reports, Bollig told investigators he purchased five pills online but used only one to induce Abbott’s miscarriage. Prosecutors charged Bollig with aggravated assault for lacing Abbot’s food and with first-degree murder in the death of the eight- to ten-week fetus Abbott was carrying.

In a preliminary hearing on the charges against Bolling, WaKeeney, Kansas, police chief Terry Eberle testified that an investigation into the miscarriage began almost immediately because an officer had informed him that Abbott, a jailer in Trego Couty, had expressed concerns to another officer that Bollig might be putting something into his girlfriend’s food to end the pregnancy. Dr. Lyle Noordhoek, a pathologist who performed an autopsy on the fetus and analyzed a blood sample from Abbott, testified that Abbott tested positive for mifepristone.

Bollig’s attorney questioned the admissibility of Bollig’s statements, including why no audio or video recordings were made of the interview that concluded in his alleged confession and his arrest, and claimed his client’s statements were made before he was properly advised of his rights. Trego County District Judge Glenn Braun will schedule a hearing at a later date to hear arguments by Bollig’s attorney that those statements should be suppressed.

Bollig is expected to enter a plea to the charges on September 9.

While unusual, Bollig’s case in not the only one of its kind. Earlier this year, a Florida man who admitted to tricking his pregnant girlfriend into taking abortion-inducting medication was sentenced to more than 13 years in a federal prison and ordered to pay his former girlfriend approximately $28,000 in restitution, on charges of tampering with a consumer product resulting in bodily injury and conspiracy to commit mail fraud. In response, the Florida legislature passed the “Unborn Victims of Violence Act,” which makes it a crime in the state to kill or injure a fetus at any stage of development during an attack on a pregnant woman. Such laws are part of a broader push for fetal “personhood” in a number of states around the country.