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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Woman Who Faced Felony Charge for Miscarriage Sues Hospital, Police

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.) 

The hospital denied Watts care even as her health worsened. She returned home and miscarried soon after. Watts’ lawsuit specifies that her miscarriage resulted in “a mess of tissue, blood, and blood clots” in her toilet, as she collapsed in shock and continued to bleed out on her floor. “Confronted with this bloody mess, Ms. Watts did what was reasonable: she flushed the toilet,” the lawsuit states. To be clear, there’s nothing illegal about this: About one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, and there are no legal standards or universal guidelines on how people should dispose of fetal remains. 

Watts returned to the hospital after her miscarriage and says a nurse told her “everything’s going to be OK” to her face, only to then call the police on her. According to Watts’ lawsuit, when police arrived, they interrogated her at her “most vulnerable” for nearly an hour, all while she was “tethered to her hospital bed with IVs.” The suit alleges that two different nurses and a police officer “knowingly” conspired to “fabricate evidence to falsely implicate” Watts in criminal conduct. 

Prior to calling the police, the nurses allegedly contacted Mercy Hospital’s risk management department and baselessly claimed Watts had given birth to a baby, left it “in a bucket,” and even saw and touched it. (In reality, a forensic pathologist later testified that her fetus had not been born alive and had not been viable.) But when police arrived at the hospital, they discussed their “plan” with the nurses; they lied to Watts that she wasn’t in trouble, but then, “without basis, they accused her of nefarious conduct, suggesting that perhaps Ms. Watts had birthed a live baby and hidden it ‘in a cabinet,’” the suit says. Police were so determined to push this entirely false version of events that Watts’ lawyers say they recorded “flatly false information” in police reports, including the insane lie about Watts touching her fetus and placing it in a bucket.

“As a result, Ms. Watts was arrested and charged with a felony: abuse of a corpse. She faced a year in prison for simply having a miscarriage at home,” the suit says, calling Watts’ ordeal “an expectant mother’s worst nightmare.”

In a statement to WKBN, Mercy Hospital denied wrongdoing: “We remain steadfast in our mission and our commitment to the patients and communities we serve with compassion and integrity. Due to patient privacy, Mercy Health will not discuss these legal proceedings.” Of course, “patient privacy” didn’t seem to matter when they reported Watts to the police. 

Dana Sussman, executive vice president of the organization Pregnancy Justice, previously told Jezebel that around 97% of criminal charges for pregnancy outcomes she’s tracked have been for “murder, manslaughter, feticide, child endangerment, abuse of a corpse,” even as none of these charges are even meant to criminalize pregnancy outcomes. Many pregnancy-related criminal charges, Sussman said, stem from “suspicion… about whether someone intentionally sought to end their pregnancy,” sometimes from health workers, similar to how Mercy Hospital internally flagged Watts for asking for an abortion. “You don’t need an abortion ban to criminalize pregnancy.”

Over 150 Congress members, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Women’s Caucus Chair Lois Frankel of Florida, signed a letter to the Biden administration last year, citing Watts’ story to demand policy change, to protect medical privacy and prevent pregnancy criminalization. “[Watts’] experience is all too common for Black women, who disproportionately experience adverse pregnancy outcomes due to inadequate health care, and disproportionately experience disrespect, abuse, and punitive responses when they seek pregnancy-related care,” the letter said. While Watts wasn’t charged, “irreparable harm has already been done and we must ensure this never happens to anyone again.”

 
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