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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- health
Brittany Watts, 34, miscarried at nearly 22 weeks.
A grand jury decided Thursday not to indict an Ohio woman on allegations that she mishandled the remains of a fetus after miscarrying her pregnancy at home.
The case had alarmed reproductive rights groups and legal experts who said there is no clear guidance on how to handle an at-home miscarriage and that police and local prosecutors overreached by charging the woman, who is Black, with “abuse of a corpse.”
Brittany Watts, 34, of Warren, was arrested last October and pleaded not guilty to the charge. If convicted, she would have faced up to a year in prison. Because the grand jury decided not to indict, the case has been dropped.
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A subsequent autopsy showed that the baby had died before being born due to a spontaneous miscarriage and that no illicit drugs were present. Watts was arrested two weeks later on accusations of “abusing a corpse.”
I’m deeply afraid that this might have turned out differently if she had even something as simple as cannabis in her system.
Ohio has legalized marijuana, so it should not be considered illicit.