A Black woman in Ohio was charged after miscarrying in her bathroom. Experts warn of the dangerous precedent.
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.
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.
All the exceptions are fake. How long does a rape conviction take to secure, assuming the perp is actually found guilty at all? Longer than a few weeks, that’s for sure!
Considering most rape kits don't even get processed, yeah it's a hell of a lot longer than a few weeks
And that's assuming that the rape is reported. Many rapes go unreported for various reasons. And requirements that the woman has to report the rape before she might be allowed to have an abortion are meant to force women into public shaming/threatening situations. ("How dare she accuse POPULAR COLLEGE FOOTBALL PLAYER of raping her! Look at what she was wearing. She was asking for it! Why was she drinking at all? The second a woman takes a drink of alcohol, she consents to have sex.")