Today, I would like to take a moment to congratulate myself for not going on any violent murder sprees, for never adopting a Ukrainian orphan and then claiming she was an adult who was trying to kill me and my family so I could “re-age” her and send her to live on her own at the age of eight, for not participating in any dog fight rings, for never having voted Republican, and for never having consumed human flesh. At the same time, I would like to congratulate the state of Ohio for not sending a woman to prison over a miscarriage — which is a far lower bar of human decency than many of us would have ever thought possible.
More specifically, we should be congratulating the grand jury that refused to charge Brittany Watts, 34, with “abuse of a corpse,” a charge which makes a lot more sense, re: cannibalism and necrophilia than, say, miscarrying a child who had no chance of survival to begin with.
“I’m happy Brittany is able to now begin to heal through all of this, and I hope and believe that her story is going to be an impetus for change,” Traci Timko, Ms. Watts’s lawyer, said.
Watts had been to Mercy Health-St. Joseph’s Hospital — a Catholic hospital, mind you — three other times in the days before the miscarriage, where she was informed by her doctor that the 22-week-old fetus she was carrying was nonviable and that there was “significant risk” of death for herself as well if she did not have her labor induced (which, to be clear, is an abortion). Before that could happen, however, Watts miscarried in her toilet, which is a very, very common occurrence. Thirty percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage and not everyone throws a full-on funeral.
Indeed, she may not have even known that any part of the fetus was flushed down the toilet.
Via Washington Post:
Watts was in her bathroom when she delivered a roughly 15-ounce fetus over the toilet. At the time, she said, she “didn’t know that at 5:48 a.m. [her] life would change forever.” The delivery left a mess of blood, stool, tissue and other bodily fluid, clogging the toilet. Watts scooped out what she believed was stopping the toilet and placed it outdoors, near the garage, cleaned the bathroom and showered, records show.
To maintain appearances to her mother, whom she had not told about the pregnancy, Watts drove to a hair appointment, said Traci Timko, Watts’s attorney. The hairdresser noticed Watts’s pale face and immediately called her mother to take her to the hospital. It was Watts’s fourth pregnancy-related trip to the hospital that week.
After she got there, she told nurses that the fetus was (she believed) in a bucket next to the garage, as she was unaware that any part of it had remained in the toilet after she flushed.
Warren Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri tried to make it seem as though Watts was the second coming of Melissa Drexler — the New Jersey teen who gave birth in a bathroom stall during prom, killed the baby (likely in a state of shock) and then went back to dancing. He told the court that the issue wasn’t “how the child died, when the child died — it’s the fact that the baby was put into a toilet, large enough to clog up a toilet, left in that toilet, and she went on [with] her day,” he said.
What else was she supposed to do though? She didn’t put the baby in the toilet, she miscarried a nonviable baby into the toilet, as many women have done before. Hell, I have seen episodes of “I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant” where women gave birth while going to the bathroom and didn’t even realize what happened until they got up and kablam! A baby!
Granted, it doesn’t sound pleasant, but things like this do happen. It is unclear what Guarnieri would have even wanted her to do, as it seems a large part of his issue was that she did not properly mourn the fetus or alert the presses. There’s no clear, known protocol for what to do in these situations, especially not one that anyone is going to think of while they are in that kind of shock.
This whole case was just horrifying, but as glad as we should be that it is over, it stands as a reminder that there are a whole lot of people out there who are so fetus crazy that they really do want to send women to prison for miscarrying. This is not an overstatement, we are not exaggerating so as to get anyone to understand the gravity of the situation or the future possibilities should things get out of hand as we continue on down this road. This is something that almost happened this week, in Ohio. It is something that people supported, it is something a woman was arrested for, it is a case that an assistant prosecutor wanted to go through with and for which a judge found probably cause to call a grand jury. It didn’t happen, but it was far too close to say it never will.
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