CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — Chillicothe police have forwarded to the Ross County Sheriff’s Office a decades-old complaint from a woman who says her stillborn child may have been aborted without her consent at a local hospital in the 1970s, authorities said.
The report, filed this week and classified as non-criminal by Chillicothe police, stems from a Jan. 14 meeting between the woman and investigators. She told police she became pregnant as a teenager in 1976 and believes her mother and a doctor conspired to terminate the pregnancy against her wishes.
According to a police narrative, the woman said she returned to Chillicothe late in her pregnancy and was taken by her mother to see a physician who allegedly administered an injection roughly two months before her due date. She said she later gave birth to a stillborn male child on July 16, 1976, at what she believed was then Adena hospital.
The woman told police she never saw the baby and was told the child was born with severe deformities. She said the infant was buried without a marker at the foot of her grandmother’s grave in a cemetery connected to the Church of the Brethren, later identified as being on Dunkard Hill Road.
Chillicothe police contacted the Ross County Coroner’s Office, which produced a handwritten fetal death certificate indicating the child was stillborn on July 16, 1977. The document, police said, is partially illegible but lists the place of birth as a “Medical Center” and indicates the funeral home involved was Hill Funeral Home of Kingston. The attending physician’s name is unclear.
Investigators also determined that medical records related to the pregnancy no longer exist due to hospital record-retention limits. Research by police found that Adena’s current location has been in use since 1973 and was referred to at the time as a medical center.
Because the incident occurred outside city jurisdiction and no criminal determination has been made, Chillicothe police said the case has been forwarded to the Ross County Sheriff’s Office for review.
No further details were released. The case remains under investigation.