If a period can be flushed without legal consequence, then so can a miscarriage | Opinion

This is a deeply uncomfortable subject, but the fact that it’s uncomfortable is exactly why we have to talk about it publicly.

A 33-year-old Ohio woman who was 22 weeks pregnant when she suffered the loss of her pregnancy is now being charged with abuse of a corpse, a fifth-degree felony, because it happened over a toilet and the expelled material — uterine lining, blood clumps and, yes, what remained of an unviable fetus — clogged the pipes.

A lack of public knowledge about pregnancy, women’s bodies, reproductive healthcare and even what exactly happens during conception, miscarriage and birth is what has led our country to this breaking point.

Statistically, 10-20% of every pregnancy ends in a miscarriage, but it’s something people don’t often talk about, which leaves pregnant people at a loss for knowledge and guidance. Experiencing a miscarriage over a toilet is an extremely common experience, albeit one that most women will never talk about. No one wants to discuss having to flush the remains of what is often a very much-wanted baby. It is, without fail, an emotionally devastating moment in their lives, and one made all the worse by how it occurs.

Opinion

The nightmare scenario that Warren, Ohio, resident Brittany Watts is experiencing right now is exactly what every person capable of pregnancy feared when Roe vs. Wade was overturned in 2022. In this strange, new world, a nonviable clump of cells has more legal rights than the grieving parents who suffered a medical emergency.

According to a local media source, the Tribune Chronicle, Watts visited a local hospital twice where she was informed the pregnancy was nonviable, and was turned away. She then “miscarried the baby while using the restroom and tried to plunge and flush the remains down the toilet, where it got stuck in the pipes.” The toilet was removed by police and taken to the county coroner’s office as evidence in the criminal case against her, according to court documents.

“Rather than focusing on healing physically and emotionally, she was arrested and charged with a felony and is fighting for her freedom and her reputation,” said Traci Timko, Watts’ defense attorney. “Miss Watts learned days before this that a miscarriage was inevitable and that the fetus could not survive outside the womb due to gestational age. This fetus died in utero.”

According to a local television station, WKBN, forensic pathologist Dr. George Sterbenz testified that he found no injury to the fetus during an autopsy and that the fetus had died before passing through the birth canal.

But none of the nuance of this case seemed to matter to Warren Municipal Court Judge Terry Ivanchak, who placed Watts on a $5,000 bond and found there was probable cause for the case to go to the county’s grand jury.

“This 33-year-old girl, with no criminal record, is demonized for something that goes on every day,” Timko said. “Women miscarry into toilets every day. If the state of Ohio expects these women to fish those remains from the toilet and deliver them to a hospital, funeral home or crematorium, the laws need to be changed.”

Are women supposed to drop to their knees to fish through their own blood and uterine lining inside a toilet bowl to find fetal remains? And what are we supposed to do with them after that?

It’s inhumane to ask that task of anyone, especially for someone dealing with the immediate and dual shocks of blood loss and pregnancy loss.

A dead clump of cells cannot be given legal precedence over the human that created it. If a period can be flushed, then so can a miscarriage.

That is not a sentence written for dramatic effect. A miscarriage is an emotionally-charged and grief-stricken moment. And if a toilet seems like the most ignominious end for what might have been a human life, then I agree with you and I think most people would too. But that can’t stop it from happening, because what else can anyone do in that terrible moment? If more women felt free to share their stories of miscarriage without fear of shame or judgment, then we might be surprised to learn just how common this tale is told.

But don’t be fooled: Just because this case does not, on its face, appear to be about abortion rights, it very much is. It demonstrates the kind of legal jeopardy that pregnant people are being placed in across the country — particularly pregnant women of color, like Watts — by ignorant judges and politicians who know nothing about pregnancy, female bodies, reproductive systems and what an abortion is and isn’t.

The idea that a fetus has the same personhood as a born human is a pernicious ideology that will poison the American legal system until female bodies are as regulated as a government meeting.

“Ending pregnancy criminalization will require concerted efforts to reject the ideology of ‘fetal personhood’... ensure that pregnancy criminalization across all pregnancy outcomes is considered a key concern in the fight to restore and expand abortion rights (and) elevate an understanding of the racial and sexist underpinnings of the criminalization of pregnant people,” found Pregnancy Justice — formerly National Advocates for Pregnant Women — in its 2022 report, “The Rise of Pregnancy Criminalization.”

We have to protect the rights of women not only to seek safe abortions, but we must also prevent the overreach of states like Ohio, Florida, Texas and too many more from criminalizing pregnancy — including and especially the parts that are uncomfortable to talk about. Fighting for our rights is going to be uncomfortable.