Brittany Watts, 33, was charged after police searched her toilet following her miscarriage in September.
A Black woman in Ohio has been charged with a felony for abuse of a corpse after she miscarried into her toilet, according to a criminal complaint, and reproductive rights experts are warning that it could set a dangerous precedent if she is convicted.
The attorney for Brittany Watts and a campaign organized on her behalf called the charges against her unjust, saying they feared the case could open the door to similar prosecutions and lawsuits over miscarriages nationwide.
Just hours after Watts, 33, was admitted to a hospital for a life-threatening hemorrhage after she miscarried in her bathroom Sep. 22, police removed her toilet from her home and searched it for fetal remains, according to a GoFundMe set up to fund her legal expenses and home repairs.
“Ms. Watts suffered a tragic and dangerous miscarriage that jeopardized her own life. Rather than focusing on healing physically and emotionally, she was arrested and charged with a felony and is fighting for her freedom and reputation,” her attorney, Traci Timko, said in a statement.
police removed her toilet from her home and searched it
Everything about this is insane and exactly what sensible people thought would happen.
I heard she did something a few years back that really upset Baby Jesus and made him cry! I’m certain God knows what he’s doing!!
These are the images the Democrats need to sear into the minds of all voters. This is pure 1984 dystopian bullshit.
Wait until they hear about what happens to nazis
That’s what it took to get to the fetus and remove it. And they’re blaming her for not doing it. There she was with a partially retained placenta, in danger of bleeding out, and she had the nerve to leave her toilet intact in order to obtain timely life saving health care.
And don’t forget, she’d been to the hospital multiple times and left because she wasn’t receiving care…all hospital caregivers and ‘legal teams’ were too busy trying to figure out if they could legally remove a dead fetus; they wouldn’t do what needed to be done. Just left her sitting there while they argued intent of the law versus letter of the law.
“She put the fetus into the toilet.” No, she didn’t. The fetus was expelled into the toilet, along with bodily waste. She tried to get everything out, but she couldn’t.
“She then went about her day.” No, she didn’t. She went to the hospital. She was bleeding (probably heavily) due to part of the placenta being left attached.
That’s just two of the twisted statements the prosecutor has made in order to make this woman look like a heartless SOB.
It’s gone too far, and short of removing Republicans from office and justices from the court, I don’t know what we can do. They are prosecuting this woman to punish her for miscarrying in an inconvenient place.
It’s worth mentioning that just 11 days earlier, had her miscarriage happened at the hospital, it would have been disposed of as medical waste…incinerated. 11 freaking days, and the state is criminalizing her.
Man whenever I bring up these kind of things to my parents, it’s always like, “well there’ll surely be an exception for it”. The reality is there’s never an exception for it. The exception has to be fought for at the expense of the victim
Just look at the “life of the mother exceptions.” There was a recent case where the fetus was all but dead and the woman’s life was in danger. She actually wanted the child, but carrying it to term and delivering it could have killed her.
Seems like an ideal life of the mother situation, right? Except the doctors said she wasn’t close enough to death. So she sued in court to get the law overturned. She won the right to have an abortion, but then the AG threatened the hospitals/doctors. Then the Texas Supreme Court ruled that she was at risk of dying, but she wasn’t CLOSE ENOUGH to death to qualify. So basically she had to be actively dying to get an abortion and even then it might not be good enough.
It’s ridiculous.
More stories like this will continue to come out. Esp if Trump is reelected.
Need a real life Bruce Wayne. Someone to spend their fortune fighting for women like this. Hire the 5 best defense attorneys in the country and start embarrassing the shit out of these hateful fucks.
Welcome to Honduras!
Not an American. Please explain why her skin colour is relevant in the headline. I have noticed this a lot in American news, and it seems intentionally divisive to me.
In America, people of color are poorly treated by police, the justice system, and the healthcare system. It is important to point out examples of this when we see it, because our system usually starts treating marginalized groups unfairly as a test to see how badly they can treat everyone.
It is very common for police to look for chargabe offenses they pin on a Black person, but not so much for white people. Once there are charges, prosecutors typically focus on conviction at all costs, especially for Black defendants.
Here we have the trifecta: a Black woman has a miscarriage and call for help, and the police show up and immediately look for reasons to arrest her. While she’s recovering from a miscarriage, she’s hit with charges of abusing a corpse because she had the audacity to miscarry in a toilet. Now she’s facing felony charges related to a miscarriage in a state that has passed such draconian anti-abortion laws that even miscarrying could lead to murder charges.
So we absolutely have to say exactly what is happening, because if we don’t, this woman and countless others will end up locked in cages with their rights stripped away from them for daring to exist in a way that didn’t satisfy the white supremacist / christofacist factions in this country.
Y’all, she refused medical treatment, twice. Abortion law was never on the table. This story omits those facts, others do not. I’ve read three stories about this case, and this one happily skips over a few pertinent details. And I’m always happy to be proven wrong, have a chance to learn.
This was a women under extreme stress who made a few bad choices. And no, there should have been no charges given the circumstances. But at no point was she refused an abortion, and at no point were doctors considering the law.
This sad tale was nothing like what happened to the woman in Texas.
There was a well publicized case where a raped 10 year old in Ohio had to leave the state for an abortion. Of course she would not seek an abortion, it was well documented they were not available in Ohio.
How do you know she refused treatment? It sounds like she wanted treatment and wasn’t given it.
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Maybe if health care wasn’t hidden behind a pay wall and maybe if health care in America didn’t have a history of abusing minority women. And any treatment she received wouldnt have saved the fetus. Also, she was afraid any treatment would have resulted in her being imprisoned anyways. Abortion bans make an already complicated situation like pregnancy even more complicated for no reason. Maybe you should read up on this situation.
