A Black woman was criminally charged after a miscarriage. It shows the perils of pregnancy post-Roe
A Black woman was criminally charged after a miscarriage. It shows the perils of pregnancy post-Roe
A Black Ohio woman who miscarried in her bathroom has been charged with abuse of a corpse. Thirty-three-year-old Brittany Watts, of Warren, awaits grand jury action.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The 33-year-old Watts, who had not shared the news of her pregnancy even with her family, made her first prenatal visit to a doctor’s office behind Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Warren, a working-class city about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of Cleveland.
Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump elevated Watts’ plight in a post to X, formerly Twitter, and supporters have donated more than $100,000 through GoFundMe for her legal defense, medical bills and trauma counseling.
Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, and author of “Policing The Womb,” said those efforts have long overwhelmingly targeted Black and brown women.
Her lawyer believes Watts may have meant that she didn’t want to fish what she knew was a dead fetus from the bucket of blood, tissue and feces that she’d scooped from her overflowing toilet.
“This 33-year-old girl with no criminal record is demonized for something that goes on every day,” she told Warren Municipal Court Judge Terry Ivanchak during Watts’ recent preliminary hearing.
Warren Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri told Ivanchak that Watts left home for a hair appointment after miscarrying, leaving the toilet clogged.
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5Mascarrying while black is probably a capital offense to the GOP
3Watts miscarrying into, and then flushing and plunging, a toilet at her home; a police investigation of those actions; and Watts, who is Black, being charged with abuse of a corpse.
I dont see what this has to do with abortion law or the fact that she is a black woman.
-7Keep reading:
Watts left the hospital on the Wednesday when, coincidentally, her pregnancy arrived at that date — after sitting for eight hours awaiting care.
It turned out the delay was because hospital officials were deliberating over the legalities, Timko said. “It was the fear of, is this going to constitute an abortion and are we able to do that,” she said.
13The reasoning behind banning abortion is that a very small fetus is actually a full person. That makes abortion murder, and even though something like 20% of pregnancies naturally end in a miscarriage, now every one of them is a potential DIY abortion i.e. murder, so they now must be investigated as such.
As for the racism aspect, well, it's just a sad fact that laws are--in general--applied more stringently and punished more severely for minorities. Of course these new laws would only be no exception.
5