Woman Who Faced Felony Charge for Miscarriage Sues Hospital, Police
Police were so determined to charge Brittany Watts, her lawyers say, that they recorded “flatly false information” in police reports, including a bizarre lie that Watts threw her baby away in a bucket.
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At the end of 2023, an Ohio woman named Brittany Watts faced felony charges for “abuse of a corpse” after miscarrying 22 weeks into her pregnancy. Watts is now suing Mercy Hospital and the medical professionals who allegedly mistreated and reported her to police, as well as the city of Warren, WKBN reported on Tuesday. Watts’ lawsuit asserts that she received improper medical care and shouldn’t have been charged at all. Her lawyers also allege medical staff and police officers conspired to fabricate evidence against her because they were so determined to charge her.
In January 2024, a jury declined to charge Watts, but the damage had already been done. Her case rightfully sparked outcry among reproductive and racial justice advocates. Many pointed out that not only should no one face criminal charges for the outcomes of their pregnancies, but that Watts had been racially profiled as a Black woman; hospital staff and the police saw her as a criminal rather than an individual experiencing a health crisis and also deemed her response to her miscarriage to be too callous.
As Watts has previously shared with the media, she first turned to Mercy after learning at a different hospital that she’d developed a fetal condition that rendered her pregnancy nonviable and dangerous. After being made to wait eight hours only to be denied treatment, Watts went home. She returned the next day and says she asked the hospital for an emergency abortion at 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy, as continuing it placed her at risk of hemorrhage, sepsis, infertility, and even death. Instead of helping her, the hospital referred her to its internal ethics committee because staff were concerned she used the word “abortion.” (Abortion is legal in Ohio until 22 weeks.)