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A Black Ohio woman was criminally charged after she miscarried in her bathroom, sparking a fierce debate and legal implications over abortion rights in the United States.
Brittany Watts, 33, has been charged with abuse of a corpse, a fifth-degree felony, after she reportedly miscarried into a toilet and began flushing and plunging in her home, The Associated Press reported. The miscarriage happened in September after multiple visits to the hospital over medical concerns during her pregnancy, according to reporters.
Watts was over 21 weeks into her pregnancy when a doctor told her the fetus would not survive. Watts would have to go through induced labor at a hospital to deliver a nonviable fetus, similar to an abortion, or else she would face a "significant risk" of death, court records state.
Traci Timko, Watts' attorney, said her client visited Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Warren multiple times with no doctor tending to her right before her pregnancy reached 22 weeks. At the time of Watts' miscarriage, abortion was legal in Ohio through 21 weeks and six days of pregnancy.
“This 33-year-old girl with no criminal record is demonized for something that goes on every day,” Timko said.
Police investigators found the intact fetus inside the toilet and collected it as evidence. An autopsy report confirmed the fetus died in utero before passing through the birth canal and didn't sustain "no recent injuries."
Warren Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri focused on the fetus' time of death during Watts’ preliminary hearing.
“The issue isn’t how the child died, when the child died,” Guarnieri reportedly told Warren Municipal Court Judge Terry Ivanchak. “It’s the fact the baby was put into a toilet, was large enough to clog up the toilet, left in that toilet, and she went on (with) her day.”
Ivanchek acknowledged how complex the case was before turning it over to a grand jury last month. If Watts is convicted, she faces up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, told reporters the case is part of a continuing trend of women's pregnancies being criminalized. Black and brown people are often the targets of these incidents.
“Post-Dobbs, what we see is kind of a wild, wild West,” Goodwin explained. “You see this kind of muscle-flexing by district attorneys and prosecutors wanting to show that they are going to be vigilant, they’re going to take down women who violate the ethos coming out of the state’s legislature.”
Ohio voters approved an amendment to enshrine abortion rights into the state's constitution in November. Abortion rights lost its federal protection after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year through the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case.
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