First Responders see some horrific things, but even they were probably shocked by a call that came to the station in late July to rush to a Durham, North Carolina home. Inside, a tiny five-pound baby floated quietly in the bathroom toilet, barely alive. The team raced to do CPR on the newborn, as its 18-year-old mom — the girl who had tried to abort it — looked on. 

The little survivor miraculously pulled through, and the small bundle — premature at 31 weeks — is only alive today because someone in the house called 911. But for the teen parents, who were arrested on multiple charges, the nightmare is just beginning.

Syeisha Johnson didn’t realize she was pregnant until she was 20 weeks along. Although she and her boyfriend, Elijah Speight, decided they didn’t want the baby, in North Carolina, abortion isn’t legal after 12 weeks. So, the couple went online to try to order mifepristone from another state, even though the FDA limits the abortion drug’s use to 10 weeks and under. They finally found a source in Virginia willing to help them break the law and ship the pills across state lines. 

In late July, Syeisha took the drugs, despite being well into her third trimester — a disaster scenario for both the young mom and her baby. As health experts will tell you, the government limits mifepristone to the early weeks of pregnancy because women are in much greater danger of complications the bigger the baby gets, and it’s also not as likely to work correctly. Even for moms who do take the abortion pill under the 10-week limit, there’s already an 11% rate of “serious adverse events,” an appalling statistic for what the FDA considers “regulated” use. 

Eventually, a detective wrote in his notes, Syeisha started having “abdominal pain” and soon after, “sat on the toilet and gave birth to a child.” No one knows who called for help, but both of the teens’ moms were in the house when police arrived. Elijah finally admitted to the officers that the box of mifepristone was in his girlfriend’s purse. According to reports, she now faces three charges for “child abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, and negligent child abuse inflicting serious bodily injury.” The baby’s father is also charged with negligent child abuse and inflicting serious bodily injury.

At 31 weeks, their baby was almost completely developed — a fully-formed, unique, little human who deserved to be welcomed into the world and loved. Instead, it was delivered into a toilet and almost left to die. And under the current administration, nothing’s being done to hold the out-of-state abortionists from places like Virginia accountable for these horror stories. Under the Comstock Act, it’s illegal for any online store, doctor, or organization to mail mifepristone to teenagers like Syeisha. And in North Carolina, where the law clearly limits abortion to the first trimester, it’s especially egregious that suppliers are ignoring red states’ clear boundaries.

There’s some hope that Todd Blanche, America’s new attorney general, will finally start taking the country’s abortion drug crisis seriously. In fact, some of the opposition to his confirmation last week came from Democrats and liberal Republicans like Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) who admitted that she was worried that he might crack down on the Amazon-type model for shipping these dangerous drugs directly to people’s mailboxes without a doctor’s supervision — or a significant other’s permission. 

“He promised an anti-abortion organization that he would seek to prohibit the mailing of abortion medication to women nationwide,” Collins posted as an explanation to vote no. Let’s hope her fears are confirmed. The situation in our nation — now a Wild West of lethal drugs — is only emboldening abusers, predators, insurgent abortionists, mifepristone suppliers, and even young people to secretly access the pills. If Syeisha had been a few days younger, police point out, she’d have also been violating North Carolina’s parental consent law on abortion. 

Last Wednesday, the couple appeared before the Durham County Court and posted bail. The city’s district attorney, Satana Deberry, was quick to defend the teenagers and even hinted at leniency because of her personal pro-abortion views. Although admitting she hadn’t reviewed the details closely, Deberry told reporters, “What I can say is that I have been on the record over and over again saying I believe a woman has the right to choose and has the right to make decisions about her own body, and we will review the evidence in this case in that light.”

Unfortunately for Deberry, whose job is to defend her government’s policies on life, her ideological extremism doesn’t give her an excuse to ignore the plain text of the law. It should also raise serious questions about her ability to serve the people of Durham, who have a vested interest in her willingness to bring people to justice for their crimes. 

Joy Stockbauer, who serves in Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, was, like most people, aghast at the circumstances of the case and the public officials’ callous disregard for the baby’s life. 

“This horrifying story sheds light on the semantics that conversations about abortion so often hinge on,” she told The Washington Stand. “The average person will be horrified to hear of a 31-week-old child being aborted and left to drown in a toilet. But in our twisted society, which elevates loaded concepts like “reproductive freedom” above basic human decency, some feel the need to pretend that the real tragedy is simply that these young folks got themselves into a messy situation.”

What’s more, Stockbauer continued, “I take major issue with the words of the public defender who claimed that ‘in order to be living, one must be born.’ How many non-living creatures do you know of with heartbeats? Or that kick, squirm, and suck their fingers? Our society has turned a blind eye to logic and science for too long.”