https://apnews.com/article/ohio-miscarriage-prosecution-brittany-watts-b8090abfb5994b8a23457b80cf3f27ce COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Ohio was in the throes of a bitter debate over abortion rights this fall when Brittany Watts, 21 weeks and 5 days pregnant, began passing thick blood clots.
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.
The doctor said that, while a fetal heartbeat was still present, Watts’ water had broken prematurely and the fetus she was carrying would not survive. He advised heading to the hospital to have her labor induced, so she could have what amounted to an abortion to deliver the nonviable fetus. Otherwise, she would face “significant risk” of death, according to records of her case.
That was a Tuesday in September. What followed was a harrowing three days entailing: multiple trips to the hospital; Watts 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. That’s a fifth-degree felony punishable by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.
Her case was sent last month to a grand jury. It has touched off a national firestorm over the treatment of pregnant women, and especially Black women, in the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. 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.
Anonymous
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Whether abortion-seekers should face criminal charges is a matter of debate within the anti-abortion community, but, post-Dobbs, pregnant women like Watts, who was not even trying to get an abortion, have increasingly found themselves charged with “crimes against their own pregnancies,” said Grace Howard, assistant justice studies professor at San José State University. “Roe was a clear legal roadblock to charging felonies for unintentionally harming pregnancies, when women were legally allowed to end their pregnancies through abortion,” she said. “Now that Roe is gone, that roadblock is entirely gone.” 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. Even before Roe was overturned, studies show that Black women who visited hospitals for prenatal care were 10 times more likely than white women to have child protective services and law enforcement called on them, even when their cases were similar, she said. “Post-Dobbs, what we see is kind of a wild, wild West,” said Goodwin. “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.” She called Black women “canaries in the coal mine” for the “hyper-vigilant type of policing” women of all races might expect from the nation’s network of health-care providers, law enforcers and courts now that abortion isn’t federally protected. In Texas, for example, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton mounted an aggressive and successful defense against a white Texas mother, Kate Cox, who sued for permission to skirt the state’s restrictive abortion law because her fetus had a fatal condition.
Anonymous
At the time of Watts’ miscarriage, abortion was legal in Ohio through 21 weeks, six days of pregnancy. Her lawyer, Traci Timko, said 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. At the time, vigorous campaigning was taking place across Ohio over Issue 1, a proposed amendment to enshrine a right to abortion in Ohio’s constitution. Some of the ads were harshly attacking abortions later in pregnancy, with opponents arguing the issue would allow the return of so-called “partial-birth abortions” and pregnancy terminations “until birth.” The hospital did not return calls seeking confirmation and comment, but B. Jessie Hill, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, said Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s was in a bind. “These are the razor’s edge decisions that health care providers are being forced to make,” she said. “And all the incentives are pushing hospitals to be conservative, because on the other side of this is criminal liability. That’s the impact of Dobbs.” Watts had been admitted to the Catholic hospital twice that week with vaginal bleeding, but she left without being treated. A nurse told the 911 dispatcher that Watts returned no longer pregnant on that Friday. She said Watts told her, “the baby’s in her backyard in a bucket,” and that she didn’t want to have a child. Timko said Watts insists she doesn’t recall saying the pregnancy was unwanted; it was unintended, but she had always wanted to give her mother a grandchild. 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.
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“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. Police would later find the fetus wedged in the pipes. “The issue isn’t how the child died, when the child died,” Guarnieri told the judge, according to TV station WKBN. “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.” In court, Timko bristled at Guarnieri’s suggestion. “You cannot be broadcasting any clearer that you just don’t get it,” she said in an interview, suggesting Watts was scared, anxious and traumatized by the experience. “She’s trying to protect Mama. She doesn’t want to get her hair done. She wants to stop bleeding like crazy and start grieving her fetus, what she’s just been through.” As chief counsel to the county’s child assault protection unit, Assistant Trumbull County Prosecutor Diane Barber is the lead prosecutor on Watts’ case. Barber said she couldn’t speak specifically about the case other than to note that the county was compelled to move forward with it once it was bound over from municipal court. She said she doesn’t expect a grand jury finding this month. “About 20% of the cases get no-billed, (as in) they do not get indicted and the case does not proceed,” she said. The size and stage of development of Watts’ fetus — precisely the point when abortion crossed from legal to illegal in most cases — became an issue during her preliminary hearing. A county forensic investigator reported feeling “what appeared to be a small foot with toes” inside Watts’ toilet. Police seized the toilet and broke it apart to retrieve the intact fetus as evidence.
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Testimony and an autopsy confirmed that the fetus died in utero before passing through the birth canal. In regard to abuse, the examination identified “no recent injuries.” Ivanchak acknowledged the case’s complexities. “There are better scholars than I am to determine the exact legal status of this fetus, corpse, body, birthing tissue, whatever it is,” he said from the bench. “Matter of fact, I’m assuming that’s what ... Issue 1’s all about: at what point something becomes viable.” Timko, a former prosecutor, said Ohio’s abuse-of-corpse statute is vague. It prohibits treating “a human corpse” in a way that would “outrage” reasonable family or community sensibilities. “From a legal perspective, there’s no definition of ‘corpse,’” she said. “Can you be a corpse if you never took a breath?” Howard said clarity on what about Watts’ behavior constituted a crime is essential. “For rights of people with the capacity for pregnancy, this is huge,” she said. “Her miscarriage was entirely ordinary. So I just want to know what (the prosecutor) thinks she should have done. If we are going to require people to collect and bring used menstrual products to hospitals so that they can make sure it is indeed a miscarriage, it’s as ridiculous and invasive as it is cruel.”
Anonymous
>>1246770 >being charged with abuse of a corpse She flushed a fucking dead baby down the toilet.
She deserves this
Anonymous
>>1246773 >At the time of Watts’ miscarriage, abortion was legal in Ohio through 21 weeks, six days of pregnancy Fuck op, your entire shill narrative is absolute dog shit, not only was she not criminally charged for an abortion not a miscarriage, but abortion was legal.
She flushed a fucking premature baby down the fucking toilet. It was so large it plugged her fucking shitter.
Fuck off op
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Another black on black crime.
Anonymous
>>1246777 Why would you bother lying about something so provably false? You cut off the sentence right in the middle to spin your dogshit narrative when the last half of it proves you wrong. She went to the hospital on the date that her pregnancy reached the 21 week 6 day mark and she had to wait 8 hours while the hospital debated the legality of performing the abortion versus letting her die. I don't know why I'm chastising you, though. This kind of disgusting and blatant dishonesty from conservatives who seemingly cheer on this kind of barbarism is why you people continue to lose elections and lose on referendum with abortions. Keep up the good work. Your particular brand of degeneracy is the best anti-conservative ad anyone could hope for.
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>>1246790 they've cultivated a base of magical thinkers who believe their side is at war with evil pedo satanists, to the point that they won't listen unless the story is embellished to an absurd degree
Anonymous
>>1246790 >She went to the hospital on the date that her pregnancy reached the 21 week 6 day mark and she had to wait 8 hours while the hospital debated the legality of performing the abortion versus letting her die. Just because she said it doesn't make it true. Where is the interview with someone from the hospital to confirm? Or how about her admittance records?
Sounds like bullshit to me.
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>>1246773 >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. Yeah, get a fucking peon plumber to come do it. They fucking love that stuff.
theonescum flushesitsself
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>>1246776 >>being charged with abuse of a human They and the likes of you forced her into this.
You deserve to be flushed down a toilet
Anonymous
>>1246776 This.
She's getting charged criminally for flushing a baby down the toilet.
And Democrats *of course* defend this behavior
Anonymous
>>1246821 >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. why are you such an evil, lying faggot
Anonymous
>>1246824 Nobody's here is lying.
She's getting criminally charged for flushing a fucking baby down the goddamn toilet you hyperreactive kneejerking asshat
Anonymous
>>1246824 Why do you think her defense lawyer is telling the truth when he's defending her? He's just repeating her story, how in the world would she know what the hospital is debating?
Doctors don't debate each other in front of a patient at any hospital I've been to, sounds like a convenient "not my fault" story she made up
Fact is she flushed such a large baby down a toilet it a professional plumber needed to come by after the fact and give the sewer line an abortion.
Anonymous
>>1246826 >>1246828 you guys sure love being comically evil. thank god you're never going to be popular again. i'll gladly enlist if you try to fuck with democracy again
Anonymous
>>1246829 She flushed a fucking baby down a goddamn toilet and your defending her actions
And you call somebody else "comically evil?"
Fuck you.
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>>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. >this is explicitly due to horrendous republican policies that make them nationally hated
Anonymous
>>1246816 So, to review, you purposefully chopped a sentence for the purpose of telling a blatant lie. Now that you've been caught in the lie and you have no argument, the only thing you can pivot back to is "well any information that goes against my narrative was fake". You were perfectly fine to believe the information when it aligned with your narrative. Now that the information doesn't support your narrative, suddenly, it "sounds like bullshit". The cognitive dissonance is wild.
>>1246821 >>1246826 Firstly, a 23 week old fetus is not a baby. I know using the word baby morally loads your emotional argument so you don't have to make a logical one but the two things are drastically different. Its been shown time and time again that even the most knowledgeable pro-life advocates couldn't even tell the difference between an undeveloped human fetus and an undeveloped dog fetus so this appealing to the concept of "omg it was a baby" is nothing but a cheap emotional appeal. Secondly, way to out yourself as having no clue how women or pregnancies work. Miscarriages can often be a) literally just a clump of fluid and blood with little to no human features and b) happen so quickly, violently, along with so many other periods of discharge and with such immense pain that a lot of women don't even realize they've miscarried. Sometimes spontaneous miscarriages can even happen in stages. When you've gone to the toilet ten times in a day with stomach pain releasing fluid, blood and other material, sometimes finding out what thing is "the baby" is not at all obvious.
>>1246828 >Doctors don't debate each other in front of a patient at any hospital I've been to Nobody made the claim that doctors were debating each other in front of a patient. Not sure where you got that form.
>sounds like a convenient "not my fault" story she made up But, to be clear, you have no evidence this is true. You're just making this up so you can make the story fit your narrative.
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>>1246829 Notice that they're also completely ignoring the fact that none of this would have happened if Republican policies hadn't made giving pregnant women medical care so complicated and possibly illegal.
>>1246834 The fact that you're trying this desperately to make this story about a woman miscarrying into a toilet instead of the fact that Republicans almost killed a woman with their dogshit healthcare policies just shows how unfathomably evil and degenerate you are. What the woman expelled into the toilet was human remains. You virtue signal on and on about this dead fetus yet you could give zero shits about the life of the woman, an actual living person, who was only in this position in the first place because of the inane policies you support.
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>>1246828 >Fact is she flushed such a large baby down a toilet it a professional plumber needed to come by after the fact and give the sewer line an abortion. You clearly didn't read the article. It doesn't say this anywhere. You just made it up.
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>>1246834 >>1246826 >>1246821 >>1246777 >>1246776 So, just to review, comically evil conservatives want a world where women go to the hospital with life threatening pregnancies, are denied healthcare and are then forced to go home, abort on the toilet and scoop their own dead fetuses out of toilet bowls filled with shit, blood and tissue to avoid being charged with crimes. They couldn't be more morally bankrupt if they tried.
Anonymous
>>1246834 >>1246826 >>1246821 >>1246777 >>1246776 So, just to review, comically evil conservatives want a world where women go to the hospital with life threatening pregnancies, are denied healthcare and are then forced to go home, abort on the toilet and suffer the pain and indignity of scooping their own dead fetuses out of toilet bowls filled with shit, blood and tissue to avoid being charged with crimes. What an absolutely disgusting group of people. Thankfully, voters have been coming to that realization.
Anonymous
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>>1246843 Not even abort, it was a miscarriage that could have killed her
Anonymous
Flush Conserviturds out of government.
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>>1246829 You're not going to do shit
Anonymous
>>1246829 >democracy Democracy is a outdated mythical fairy tale for old boomers I'm afraid. The future is eating bug sandwiches and cricket powder; living in pods; and owning nothing. Get with the times grandpa.
Anonymous
>>1246876 How did you get this bad?
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>>1246876 So the future Republicans are pushing for in their fascist utopia.
Anonymous
>>1246877 I was raped by an LGBTQ.
Anonymous
Anonymous
>>1246843 >Thankfully, voters have been coming to that realization. they are?
p sure dumbfuck american voters literally just gave the republican party a majority in the house not 1 year ago....
voters don't realize a damn thing. the fact that they have given more than half of the control of congress to republicans shows how absolutely braindead the average american voter is
Anonymous
>>1246838 >So, to review, you purposefully chopped a sentence for the purpose of telling a blatant lie. Lol no you dumb faggot, I just took the relevant part of what was said. Sorry you don't like the facts.
Anonymous
>>1246770 >Watts, who is Black Relevancy?
How did AP descend into a shitty poopooganda rag?
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>>1246829 Why are you thanking God?
You don’t believe in him, none of your kind does.
Anonymous
>>1246930 Well, no, you lied. You chopped a sentence in half to make the argument that it was perfectly possible for her to get an abortion when the other half of the sentence proved this argument to be a lie. You got caught in a lie.
>>1246924 >they are? Yes. Incumbent president was unseated with the most voter turnout in U.S. history. Republicans got bodied in their midterms, have underperformed by every metric for the last 3 years and continually lose on referendum on nearly every issue they fight for - abortion being the biggest one. Republicans are in big trouble.
Anonymous
>>1247053 Nta but nothing in there said she couldn't get an abortion. Its actually quite vague. It said she could get an abortion, but went to a hospital, apparently decided to leave, and then went home and flushed a dead baby down a toilet and then came back the next day.
Nothing in here said she couldn't get medically treated. It literally states she was in a hospital for a few hours and then jumps around to two days later after she flushed a baby
Anonymous
>>1247056 >Nta but nothing in there said she couldn't get an abortion It literally does. Its written in the article.
>It said she could get an abortion, but went to a hospital, apparently decided to leave, and then went home and flushed a dead baby down a toilet and then came back the next day. That's not what the article said. You didn't even read it. Opinion discarded.
Anonymous
>>1246958 Turns out conservatives are racist. Shocking I know.
Anonymous
>>1247132 >Ass Press >conservative Dum dum moment
Anonymous
>>1247060 How doe it feel not having an reading comprehension?
Anonymous
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>>1247167 How does it feel knowing the only way you can win an argument is by successfully gaslighting someone into not believing their own eyes?
Anonymous
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>>1247167 >It’s akshually quite vague. Retard.
>>1246873 Anonymous
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>>1247167 How doe it feel doe
Anonymous
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>>1246770 >MUH NRA reminder that Democrats think terrorists should have murdered Rittenhouse and he shouldn't have been able to defend himself. This is the real reason they oppose gun rights
Anonymous
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reminder not to feed the seagulls
Anonymous
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>>1246776 you deserve to be flushed down a toilet too
Anonymous
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>>1247167 GASLIGHT DETECTED GASLIGHT DETECTED GASLIGHT DID I MENTION GASLIGHT?????
Anonymous
>>1247053 >Republicans are in big trouble. I fucking hope so, but Americans never fail to disappoint.
Anonymous
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>>1247328 Why would eurotrash care? They're the same neoliberal scum that are ruining your eurotrash lands.
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>>1247154 >Media has a conservative bias Shocking, I know
Anonymous
>>1246770 More abortions = less black people, to my understanding? I say, Let it ride.
Anonymous
>>1246843 At least a quarter of the people in this thread are rapists who get off to this concept so good luck convincing them. But yeah, it’s gross af. We continue to devolve further and further into a 3rd world nation
Anonymous
>>1247363 >Oh nooooo, women can't kill their unborn babies, third world country, QQ Don't worry faggot, you don't engage in activities that endanger the gene pool, and you don't need a manbortion.
Anonymous
>>1247365 >Forcing women to have horrible miscarriages is a good thing and they should be arrested for having them. In these cases, the baby would not have survived anyway. You’re so delusional it’s not even funny, just scary. I wonder what you would have to say about early abortion process that is described in the book of Numbers, which was mandated by God.
Anonymous
>>1247361 Shhh.. don't get in the way of the moral outrage machine
Anonymous
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>>1247368 True. We can't have normies understanding the mechanations that govern them.
Anonymous
>>1247367 Not a Christian, just not braindead.
I'm honestly fine with you guys killing your own kids; I couldn't really control it if I tried and it's probably better for society that so few of you guys truly reproduce.
That said, I can't see abortion as anything other than killing a baby. Any doctor who has dehumanized a baby to the point that they could grotesquely butcher it inside the womb and then piece it back together on a cold metal table has experienced a complete departure from their own humanity and morality. They are truly monsters and anyone that watches what they do without remorse and repugnance is also a monster.
I don't know if there's an afterlife for anyone, but we can both be sure there is nothing for you to look forward to.
Anonymous
>>1247393 Abortion is very uncomfortable for me. I don’t really respect people who are just irresponsible and continue to have abortions because they were careless.
But if it was my girlfriend or wife, and if continuing the pregnancy will either greatly harm or kill her, then I’m sorry, I’d be out of my mind to put the life of someone not even living yet over the life of my partner. That is my stance.
Anonymous
>>1247395 And in that literally one case in all of America for this year, the bitch went to California to get it done and I don't care. Start a gofundme and donate your shillings. Or get in your car and drive the bitch.
Anonymous
>>1247398 So what are you arguing with me for? You jumped to a strawman conclusion about me and then acted like I wouldn’t know what to do if an emergency happened to my partner. All I’m saying is that these laws are putting women who don’t even want to abort, in danger, and are putting them through shitty situations I wouldn’t wosh on anyone, and then they are being arrested in top of it.
Anonymous
>>1247401 Then I guess we should let every whore kill their baby because this one lady has a potential problem with the natural course of things.
Anonymous
Try working with Kermit gosnell. Nuff said on the abortion issue.
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>>1247411 >Kermit gosnell Liberal hero just doing abortions for low income minorities.
Also don't know who he is because ignorance is their best personality trait.
Anonymous
>>1247406 Again with the strawman, Jesus Christ.
Anonymous
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>>1246790 >Why would you bother lying about something so provably false? >Conservatives Anonymous
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>>1246829 >try to fuck with democracy again define democracy
its what we have when a democrat is president?
lol
Anonymous
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>>1247416 Can't even defeat a "strawman", lol, lmao.
Anonymous
>>1246773 >the baby’s in her backyard in a bucket,” and that she didn’t want to have a child. Well there's the real story. Mind you I support mandatory abortion for all nogs.
Anonymous
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>>1250020 That is an odd choice in the article of what is put in quotations.
Anonymous
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>>1246924 The in-party always does poorly in midterms.
The fact that the hyped up "red wave" was more of a pink ripple shows how little support they have.
Why do you think they're talking about raising the voting age to 20, 25, 30 or more or even taking the vote away from women? They see the writing on the wall.