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.

      • @chakan2@lemmy.world
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        26 months ago

        Sure…and there’s precedent already. The first two things Biden should have done in office was give us 15 justices and senators to DC and Puerto Rico.

        However…the donations the Ds got for Roe being over turned were astronomical. It’s lucrative for them to not fix problems and just bitch about them.

        • @TheFonz@lemmy.world
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          06 months ago

          Wait, the SC has changed its count since 1869??? I had no idea we could keep adding justices without setting precedent.