Brittany Watts, a 33-year-old resident of Warren, Ohio (about 15 miles northwest of Youngstown) had a miscarriage last September. Now Watts is being charged with a felony for "abuse of a corpse".
Watts had a series of hospital visits for vaginal bleeding. She subsequently gave birth to a stillborn fetus in her home and disclosed this information to the hospital.
Ohio voters passed a constitutional amendment enshrining reproductive rights in November. However, since Watts' miscarriage took place in September, she is subject to the previous law.
However, there must be a suspicion that Watts would not have been charged at all if the U.S. Supreme Court hadn't overturned Roe v. Wade. Further complicating matters is that Watts is African-American which also raises questions as to whether she would have faced charges if she was white.
For a county in Ohio to prosecute a woman for having a miscarriage on top of adult women in Texas and in Kentucky having to petition courts to obtain abortions is only going to further encourage female voters to continue the trend of voting for Democratic candidates which began in earnest during the 2022 mid-terms only months after Dobbs supplanted Roe.
Whatever reservations voters might have about President Biden will be mitigated in great part by Republicans who gleefully insist upon treating women with cruelty effectively rendering them as second-class citizens without basic bodily autonomy.
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