This is just how ridiculous the retarded right have become
Quote:A US woman who miscarried at 21 weeks pregnant could face a year in prison in Ohio after she was charged with abuse of a corpse.
Brittany Watts, 33, began passing thick blood clots during her second trimester in September.
A doctor told her that while the foetal heartbeat was still present, her water had broken prematurely and the foetus would not survive.
He advised heading to the hospital to have her labour induced, so she could have what amounted to an abortion to deliver the non-viable foetus.
Otherwise, she would face "significant risk" of death, according to records of her case.
What followed for Ms Watts was a harrowing three days of multiple trips to the hospital; and miscarrying in a toilet at her home.
These actions, investigated by police, led to the charge of abuse of a corpse, a felony punishable by up to a year in prison and a $US2,500 ($3,731) fine.
Ohio abortion law
Last year, the Supreme Court overturned the historic Roe v Wade legal decision, making it the responsibility of individual states to decide if abortion is legal.
Abortion is legal in Ohio but is restricted.
A law signed by Republican Governor Mike DeWine in April 2019 prohibits most abortions after the first 21 weeks and six days.
The law states that abortion is legal until "viability" which is the stage of pregnancy where the foetus is determined to be able to develop outside of the womb.
But, "viability" varies in each pregnancy and Ms Watts's was determined non-viable.
When Ms Watts first experienced the blood clots she was 21 weeks and five days pregnant.
As she waited eight hours in urgent care she arrived at 21 weeks and six days, the cut-off for a legal abortion.
The delay was because hospital officials were deliberating over the legalities, said Traci Timko, a lawyer for Ms Watts.
"It was the fear of, is this going to constitute an abortion and are we able to do that," she said.
Ms Watts left without being treated and, after arriving home, she miscarried.
She returned to hospital a day later, no longer pregnant.
A nurse from the hospital phoned 911, telling the dispatcher that Ms Watts did not want to have a child.
Ms Watts insists she does not recall saying the pregnancy was unwanted; it was unintended, but she had always wanted to give her mother a grandchild, he lawyer said.
"This 33-year-old girl with no criminal record is demonised for something that goes on every day," Ms Timko told Warren Municipal Court Judge Terry Ivanchak during Ms Watts’s recent preliminary hearing.
Warren assistant prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri told Justice Ivanchak that Ms Watts left home for a hair appointment after miscarrying, leaving the toilet clogged.
Police would later find the foetus wedged in the pipes.
The size and stage of development of Ms Watts’s foetus — precisely the point when abortion crossed from legal to illegal in most cases — became an issue during her preliminary hearing.
Testimony and an autopsy confirmed that the foetus died in utero before passing through the birth canal.
Ms Watts's case was sent to a grand jury last month.
It has touched off a national firestorm over the treatment of pregnant women, especially black women, in the aftermath of the overturning of Roe v Wade.
Civil Rights attorney Benjamin Crump elevated Ms Watts's plight in a post to X, formerly Twitter, and supporters have donated more than $US100,000 through GoFundMe for her legal defence, medical bills and trauma counselling.
Pregnant women like Ms Watts, who was not even trying to get an abortion, have increasingly found themselves charged with "crimes against their own pregnancies", said Grace Howard, assistant justice studies professor at San José State University.
"Roe was a clear legal roadblock to charging felonies for unintentionally harming pregnancies, when women were legally allowed to end their pregnancies through abortion," she said.
"Now that Roe is gone, that roadblock is entirely gone."
Lawyer says black women are targets in 'wild west'
Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California said those efforts have overwhelmingly targetted black women.
Even before Roe was overturned, studies show that black women who visited hospitals for prenatal care were 10 times more likely than white women to have child protective services and law enforcement called on them, even when their cases were similar, she said.
"Post-Dobbs, what we see is kind of a wild, wild west," Ms Goodwin said.
"You see this kind of muscle-flexing by district attorneys and prosecutors wanting to show that they are going to be vigilant, they're going to take down women who violate the ethos coming out of the state's legislature."
She called black women "canaries in the coal mine" for the "hyper-vigilant type of policing" women of all races might expect from the nation's network of healthcare providers, law enforcers and courts now that abortion is not federally protected.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-12-17/ohio-woman-charged-after-miscarriage/1032...The woman has a miscarriage, probably one of the most traumatic events in a woman's life, and instead of being allowed to grieve and mourn, now she has to deal with being treated like a criminal by the retarded right.
The right has a lot to answer for
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The Retarded Right and aftereffects of Roe V Wade (Read 1326 times)
