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.

  • greenskye@lemm.eeEnglish
    6·
    11 months ago

    Fair point, but I think it’s not quite as benign apathy as you imply. I think rather a lot of people are racist, or sexist, or believe that ‘sluts that got knocked up deserve to be punished with a baby’. I think the uncomfortable truth that the left hasn’t figured out, is that the nasty stuff trump said was at the very least not offensive to far too many Americans.

    We are far, far closer to a society where those white folks in the background calmly watching a lynching of a black guy than we like to believe. They’re not the ones with the rope and they may not have ever done anything explicit themselves, but they’re all fine watching it and spending time with the people who did it too.

    Most of American society seems to be that classic, fake white Christian charity group that seems so helpful putting out a meal for the homeless at the holidays while simultaneously hating everyone they can get away with, abusing their family at home, and generally being terrible people that have an outwardly normal appearance.