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.

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.

  • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    291·
    11 months ago

    Yeah that’s the crux of the argument the lawyer is making:

    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.”

    She’d already been in and out of the hospital, and so when she got home I’m sure she was so traumatized and confused that she probably thought she just had to release whatever was left and move on. Kinda like what happens in a period. The blood comes out, you flush it and clean up, end of story.

    I would imagine the “proper” protocol would be for the doctor to “perform” the procedure in a hospital and dispose of it the same way they do of all biological waste. There is absolutely no way she would have an intimate knowledge of Ohio’s corpse desecration laws. I buried my cat in the back yard and that was that. She should be afforded the same dignity here, since the fetus died in utero.