Woman who faked cancer to get abortion also defrauded veterans charities

In April, Arizona woman Chalice Renee Zeitner was convicted of eleven counts of fraud stemming from her faking cancer in order to get a late-term abortion at taxpayer expense. Now, in a related case, she has also been found guilty of defrauding a veterans organization.

As Live Action News covered when her case first came to light, Zeitner allegedly told doctors she needed a late-term abortion because chemotherapy and radiation treatments had exposed her preborn child to radiation. She was also accused of defrauding two separate charities and setting up a phony fundraiser, amassing thousands of dollars for nonexistent medical treatment.

Her story raised suspicion when treatment for a subsequent pregnancy yielded no evidence Zeitner ever had cancer and the doctor she had listed as having treated her for cancer denied her claims.

Her latest conviction is for falsely claiming she was a Marine Corps veteran, a racing driver, and a South African attorney to instigate relationships with personnel of the Veterans Hope and Armed Forces Racing charities. She then used the perceived legitimacy those relationships gave her to defraud other groups out of tens of thousands of dollars.

In addition, she set up phony credit card accounts using personal information from the founder of Veterans Hope and his family, eventually amassing over $25,000 in debt. Sentencing is slated for August 12.

Zeitner’s original case highlights pro-lifers’ primary objection to “health exceptions” in abortion restrictions, which, per the Supreme Court’s 1973 Doe v. Bolton decision defining “health” as “all…physical, emotional, psychological, [and] familial [factors] relevant to the wellbeing of the patient,” tend to be broad and subjective enough that it could be manipulated to justify any abortion.

Abortion-related defrauding of taxpayers is not limited to rogue individuals like Zeitner, either–Planned Parenthood has been implicated in dozens of public audits amounting to millions in Medicaid fraud.