The former West Point cadet admitted giving his girlfriend abortion pills without her consent. He pleaded guilty to assault, and she is now suing him.
Caleb Suh, a former West Point cadet who admitted secretly giving his pregnant girlfriend abortion pills in 2022, is being sued by her for assault and battery, months after he pleaded guilty to a federal assault charge. No criminal charge over the loss of the pregnancy has been reported.
The woman, identified as Jane Doe, filed the suit on Oct. 28 in New York County Supreme Court, NBC News reported. Both were cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at the time.
What Caleb Suh Admitted in Court
Suh pleaded guilty in June to assault resulting in substantial bodily injury to a dating partner, a federal crime carrying up to five years in prison. The case was brought by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.
He admitted impersonating his girlfriend to order abortion medication online, sedating her with Xanax in a drink he called a prenatal protein shake, and administering the pills after she fell asleep, the Associated Press reported.
“My intent was use the Xanax to unwittingly sedate my girlfriend so that I could then administer the abortion pills, which I had obtained via the online pharmacy,” Suh said, according to the complaint, as quoted by Fox News.
He told the court he was “deeply and immeasurably sorry for my actions and the pain that I have caused.” His sentencing was moved to January 2027 so he could finish a semester at Columbia University, AP reported.
What the Lawsuit Alleges
The complaint says Doe told Suh she wanted to keep the baby. Suh “repeatedly demanded that Ms. Doe terminate the pregnancy” and threatened to kill himself if she refused, the suit says.
The complaint dates the drink to Feb. 4, 2022, while AP described the assault as taking place that March. Doe woke bleeding, called 911 and learned at a hospital that she was miscarrying, the suit says. It alleges Suh ignored her attempts to reach him.
Doe reported Suh to Army investigators at West Point in May 2022, according to the lawsuit. The academy has not said what came of that inquiry.
Suh later graduated from Cornell University, which already faces scrutiny over the separate Cornell Chi Phi lawsuit, and in September began a master’s program at Columbia. Columbia declined to comment.
“She’s suffered a life-changing event that she is still dealing with and will be dealing with for the rest of her life,” Doe’s lawyer, Russell Kornblith, told AP. Suh’s lawyer declined to comment.
What Federal Fetal Homicide Law Covers
Federal law does allow a separate charge for harm to a pregnancy in some cases. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act, passed in 2004, says a person whose conduct violates certain federal laws and thereby kills or injures a child in utero “is guilty of a separate offense under this section.” The assault statute Suh pleaded guilty under is on that list.
The penalty generally matches what the law would impose had the same harm been done to the mother. Only an intentional killing, or an attempt, is punished under the federal murder and manslaughter sections, and the death penalty is barred.
The law carves out consensual abortion and medical treatment, and it bars prosecution “of any woman with respect to her unborn child.”
Cadets fall under the military justice system, and the same law added a parallel offense, Article 119a, to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. None of the reporting says whether prosecutors or Army investigators considered either charge.
New York Law and the Born-Alive Line
New York’s homicide statute defines a person as “a human being who has been born and is alive,” FactCheck.org noted after the state’s 2019 Reproductive Health Act removed abortion from the penal code.
Before that change, the homicide definition also covered an unborn child after more than 24 weeks of pregnancy, according to America Magazine, a Jesuit publication. Pro-life advocates argued that violence ending a pregnancy can no longer be prosecuted as severely, though it can still be charged as assault on the woman, the magazine wrote.
How Other Forced Abortion Cases Were Charged
Texas has taken a different route. In June 2025, Texas Rangers charged Justin Anthony Banta with capital murder, alleging he slipped mifepristone to his pregnant girlfriend, who miscarried. The Texas Tribune called it the state’s first murder charge in an abortion-related case. In 2024, Houston man Mason Herring pleaded guilty to injury to a child and assault of a pregnant person for giving his then-wife misoprostol.
Experts the Tribune interviewed about Banta disagreed on what such charges mean. “The victim here is the woman who was assaulted by being given a drug without her knowledge,” said Joanna Grossman, a Southern Methodist University law professor. She said the charge was “about trying to establish fetal personhood in a more direct way than they’ve been able to.”
John Seago, president of Texas Right to Life, said women remain protected. “Right now, there is no way any woman could be prosecuted by any Texas law, any pro life policy that is being considered,” he said.
Why Both Sides of the Abortion Debate Cite These Cases
Such cases have entered the fight over abortion pills by mail that followed the conservative-majority Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
In May, more than 100 Republican lawmakers urged the justices to restore an in-person dispensing rule for mifepristone, arguing mail access enables coercion, Fox News reported. “Chemical abortion drugs kill innocent children and put mothers’ lives at risk,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La.
The Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, wrote that reproductive coercion “far more often involves individuals being forced or pressured into becoming pregnant or continuing a pregnancy.” It added that “administering drugs to an individual without their consent is already a criminal offense.”
Advocates also warn that personhood-style charges reach pregnant people themselves. Pregnancy Justice, which supports abortion rights, counted at least 902 cases from June 2022 to June 2025 in which people were charged over conduct tied to pregnancy, pregnancy loss or birth.
Featured image from: USMA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons