While this prosecution was completely fucked up and was 100% linked to the criminalisation of abortion (and therefore miscarriages and pregnancy in general), the issue was that following the traumatic premature birth she didn’t immediately remove the baby from the toilet
Moving north wouldn’t have helped on paper, as the alleged crime of letting your baby drown is still illegal
That said, possibly a more progressive state might have had the good sense to not prosecute or even treat this as a criminal matter. On the other hand, the DA where this happened was a Democrat according to the article
A grand jury declined to indict her, so it ended ‘okay’, apart from all the unnecessary additional horrific trauma inflicted on a grieving mother and being a harrowing sign of dark repressive times
Right, I was trying to imply that it wasn’t really okay, hence the ‘okay’ in inverted commas and stuff - this obviously isn’t okay