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Owens appears in court on November 18, 2025 In the long history of reproductive rights, most threats arrive plainly labeled: a statute restricting abortion, a court decision narrowing autonomy, a policy aimed at criminalizing pregnancy outcomes. What is unfolding in Maricopa County is more subtle—and for that reason more dangerous. It is the first known case in the United States in which a woman faces sweeping felony charges, including offenses in the same class as manslaught

By the time prosecutors in Maricopa County announced their first set of charges against Laura Owens, the public had already reached its own verdict. It didn’t matter that no trial had occurred. It didn’t matter that the evidence had not been tested in court. It didn’t even matter that early medical records, protective orders, and sworn declarations painted a far more complex picture than the headlines suggested. Owens entered the criminal process as something few defendants e

One way to understand the Owens prosecution is to ask a question the law itself has never bothered to answer: If this conduct is criminal, why has American television spent decades treating it as entertainment? For years, reality television has functioned as an unintentional catalog of human misrepresentation. Entire genres are built around people lying to one another about identity, intimacy, pregnancy, fidelity, money, health, and intention. Viewers are invited not to recoi

Maricopa County likes to describe itself as overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by growth. Overwhelmed by violence. Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of cases that arrive faster than any prosecutor’s office can reasonably handle. That explanation has been offered for years—sometimes apologetically, sometimes defensively—to families waiting for answers after shootings, to survivors of sexual assault whose kits remain untested, to communities living with offenders who were never charged bec

When the story first hit Arizona news, it sounded like something dreamed up in a TV writers’ room. A Phoenix woman, Laura Owens, supposedly fakes a pregnancy with former Bachelor lead Clayton Echard, files a paternity case, loses — and then somehow ends up criminally indicted on seven felony counts in May 2025. The headlines said an online group called “Justice for Clayton” helped expose her, and Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell swooped in to finish the job. The messa

Criminal prosecutions are often framed as disputes over facts. But beneath the surface, every felony case turns on a more exacting question: whether the defendant possessed criminal intent at the moment the alleged conduct occurred. Not confusion. Not fear. Not emotional distress. Intent— mens rea —requires knowledge and purpose that the law recognizes as culpable. That requirement is not a technicality. It is a constitutional safeguard, designed to prevent the criminal law f