A Tennessee woman who spent more than a year in jail after being accused of trying to end her own pregnancy with a coat hanger pleaded guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for her immediate release, according to officials and advocacy groups. 
 
 Anna Yocca, 32, pleaded guilty to "attempted procurement of a miscarriage" on Monday after spending one year and one month in prison while awaiting trial in a case where she was initially charged with attempted murder, the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, an advocacy group that advised Yocca’s lawyers, announced Tuesday. 
 
 She was released from the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center on Monday at 9:10 p.m. local time (10:10 p.m. ET), according to the Rutherford County Sheriff's Office. 
 
 Anna Yocca. Rutherford County Sheriff's Office 
 
 The original arrest report from the Murfreesboro Police Department in Tennessee accuses Yocca of filling a bathtub with water and attempting to self-abort her pregnancy in Sept. 2015. Yocca became concerned with her safety because of all the bleeding, the report said, and her boyfriend drove her to a local hospital. 
 
 After seeking help at the hospital, Yocca voluntarily underwent cesarean surgery and gave birth to a premature baby who has since been adopted, according to a statement from NAPW. 
 
 Prosecutors in the state indicted Yocca for attempted murder in Dec. 2015 for allegedly using a coat hanger to end her 24-week pregnancy last September. 
 
 Yocca’s bond was set for $200,000, which she was unable to pay and thus remained in jail awaiting her trial, the NAPW said. 
 
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 “What these kinds of arrests do is it will discourage people from seeking help,” Lynn Paltrow, the executive director for NAPW, told NBC News. 
 
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 In February of 2016, a judge dismissed the attempted murder charge, according to the statement. Yocca was then charged with aggravated assault last spring. 
 
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 In November, she was charged with three felonies: aggravated assault with a weapon, attempted criminal abortion and attempted procurement of a miscarriage, the NAPW said. She faced between six and 24 years in jail. 
 
 "They have brought several different versions of charges against her and so I think that it is a strong indication of unfortunately how our criminal justice system is broken," Allison Glass, state director for reproductive rights advocacy group Healthy and Free Tennessee told NBC News. 
 
 Yocca was sentenced to one year in prison on Monday and was granted time served, Glass said. 
 
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 A message left with the office of Hugh Ammerman, the Rutherford County assistant district attorney prosecuting the case, was not immediately returned Tuesday afternoon. 
 
 Paltrow said the case highlighted the various ways prosecutors can try to punish women for the outcomes for the pregnancies. 
 
 “I think given the enormous discretion prosecutors have and the enormous number of laws to choose from to intimidate and incarcerate pregnant women, this is not a surprising outcome,” Paltrow said. 

 A Tennessee woman jailed for more than a year after trying to use a coat hanger to abort her 24-week-old fetus pleaded guilty on Monday to one felony count in exchange for her immediate release from jail. 
 
 The woman, Anna Yocca, 32, sought medical care at a hospital after attempting the at-home abortion in September 2015, according to National Advocates for Pregnant Women, an advocacy group that helped with her defense. She was later arrested and was initially charged with attempted murder. Under an agreement reached with prosecutors, she pleaded guilty this week to attempted procurement of a miscarriage and was given credit for time served. 
 
 Her case has alarmed abortion-rights advocates concerned by increasingly strict state abortion laws and the election of Donald J. Trump, who has expressed support for overturning Roe v. Wade and once said during the presidential campaign that women who have abortions should be punished. 
 
 “This case sends a dangerous message,” said Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, who called the prosecution of Ms. Yocca “a misuse of the existing criminal law system.” 

 Anna Yocca (Photo: Rutherford County Sheriff's Office) 
 
 The woman accused of using a coat hanger to end her pregnancy in 2015 was released from a Rutherford County jail after entering a guilty plea to a lesser charge. 
 
 Anna Yocca, 32, was released from the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center around 9 p.m. Monday, exactly one year and one month from the day she was imprisoned and charged with attempted murder, according to jail records. 
 
 Yocca was originally charged with attempted first-degree murder in December 2015 for reportedly using a coat hanger to perform an abortion on herself. 
 
 That charge was reduced twice. First in spring 2016 to aggravated assault and again in November to one count each of aggravated assault with a weapon, attempted procurement of a miscarriage and attempted criminal abortion. 
 
 On Monday, she pleaded guilty to attempted procurement of a miscarriage and received a sentence of one year in jail. The charges of aggravated assault with a weapon and attempted criminal abortion were dismissed as part of her plea agreement. 
 
 Yocca received credit for time served, meaning she had served the entirety of her sentence while waiting for her trial, according to court documents. She had remained in jail since Dec. 9, 2015, on $200,000 bond from the first charge. 
 
 The final charges against her, all felonies, carried a possible sentence of six to 24 years in prison and fines up to $18,000 when combined. She pleaded guilty to the lesser charge, attempted procurement of a miscarriage, which is a class E felony and carries a sentence of one to six years in prison and a $3,000 fine. 
 
 According to the original complaint, Murfreesboro Police Detective Tommy Roberts reported Yocca filled a bathtub with water, “took a coat hanger and attempted to self-abort her pregnancy” in September 2015. 
 
 Her boyfriend took her to Saint Thomas Rutherford Hospital and she was later transferred to Saint Thomas Midtown in Nashville, where Yocca gave birth to the child two weeks after the attempted abortion, according to a Nov. 10 opinion from Rutherford County Circuit Judge Royce Taylor. 
 
 Yocca was 24 weeks' pregnant, and medical professionals at Saint Thomas Midtown in Nashville were able to save the child, who weighed 1.5 pounds. The child was placed at the time into the custody of the Department of Children's Services. 
 
 Saint Thomas is owned and operated by Ascension Health, a Catholic health care ministry that operates under pro-life guidelines. 
 
 In 2015, there were seven abortion clinics in Tennessee. Those clinics are located in Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis and Bristol. 
 
 Yocca's story went viral after her arrest and attracted pro-choice protesters to her arraignment in February. 
 
 Reach Michelle Willard at 615-278-5164 and on Twitter @MichWillard. 
 
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– A Tennessee woman who tried to end her pregnancy with a coat hanger in 2015 was let out of jail Monday after entering a guilty plea to a lesser charge than the original attempted first-degree murder charge, the Daily News Journal reports. Anna Yocca, 32, had previously seen the charge reduced to aggravated assault last spring, then again to one count each of aggravated assault with a weapon, attempted procurement of a miscarriage, and attempted criminal abortion in November. Monday's plea was for felony attempted procurement of a miscarriage, and because her time served already fulfilled her sentence (one year in prison), Yocca walked out of the Rutherford County Adult Detention Center Monday evening a free woman. Yocca attempted to end her pregnancy at home in a bathtub in September 2015, when she was 24 weeks pregnant, per the New York Times, but heavy bleeding brought her to a nearby hospital, where she had an emergency C-section and delivered a 1.5-pound baby boy with serious medical issues—two weeks after the abortion attempt. That child was eventually placed in foster care and adopted. In Tennessee, women can only receive abortions after 24 weeks if the mother's health or life are in danger, and only with counseling 48 hours beforehand. Yocca stayed in prison all this time because she couldn't raise her $200,000 bond. Abortion rights advocates are worried what precedent her case could set. "What these kinds of arrests do is it will discourage people from seeking help," Lynn Paltrow, the director for National Advocates for Pregnant Women, tells NBC News.