Woman charged with felony for having a stillbirth

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

D&C was not the only option. But continue to assume you know the case best!

An immediate D&C when she first showed up bleeding and with a nonviable fetus and an infection was the standard of care. Which she, incontrovertibley, did not receive.

It’s unclear what the the reports on her being “offered an induction” means. I’ll be really curious to see more information about it. What I strongly suspect is that the Catholic hospital admins suggested a workaround of inducing labor at 22 weeks instead of the standard of care (D&C) because inducing labor after theoretical viability is technically not an abortion under Catholic doctrine and Ohio law.

I think it's also unclear that the hospital being Catholic had anything to do with this. It sounds as though the issue was Ohio law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am still confused by all the details. I think that charging her was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and the police and prosecutor who participated in bringing those charges are doing absolutely the wrong thing.

However, I am not totally understanding the hatred being directed at the nurse. It seems to be based on three things.

1) She referred to the fetus as a baby. Which people do all the time. I am 100% pro choice. I do not think a fetus has the same status or rights as a born child. But I absolutely told my DH "Ooh, the baby is kicking" and my older child "There is a baby growing in mommy's tummy". Colloquially, lots of people use the word "baby" to refer to fetuses.

2) She called 911 about the claim that the remains fetus were in a bucket outside. To me, a fetal remains, or at least those that are far enough along to appear human in a bucket outside are a problem. They might be a problem because the medical team might want to test to them to see why the fetus died. They might be a problem, because no one wants a wild animal dragging that through your yard. They might be a problem because someone could be exposed to medical waste and potential germs. They might be a problem, because once she was past the trauma, Brittany Watts, who sounds like she was pretty dissociated and probably very out of it from blood loss, might have wanted to choose how to dispose of them. And, since I'm unclear what the nurse knew in the moment about the previous admissions, and the length of gestation, and the medical picture, might have been a problem because if she wasn't 100% sure that the fetus was delivered dead, then there was a responsibility to investigate. So, sending someone to the house to secure the bucket and investigate, and maybe look in the toilet once it was determined that the baby wasn't in the bucket, makes sense to me. And I don't know, other than 911, who you call to do that. So, in that moment, that might have been who I called.

I like to think that where I live, in Maryland, you could call police to help a woman secure the remains of her miscarriage, for burial or medical testing, without that woman then having her charged with a crime, and before this I wouldn't even have occurred to me that I was putting her at risk of being charged with a crime. So, I guess I am saying that while I think the prosecutor and the police are awful human beings, I'm going to withhold judgment on this nurse.

Now, if it turns out that there is a timeline where the nurse reviewed all the medical documentation before she made that call, or she was involved in previous medical care and so knew without a doubt that the fetus was dead, that might change my mind.

But, otherwise, I'm going to ask. Before you read about this case. If you were suddenly faced with a bleeding disoriented woman who may not have seemed like a reliable narrator (trauma and blood loss will do that) who was far enough along in a pregnancy that the baby might have been viable, and said that she had delivered a baby, but didn't have a baby or corpse with her, and said that the body was in her backyard unprotected, what would you do?

I would review her medical chart which would clearly say that she had a miscarriage.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

According to a report by the Trumbull County Coroner’s Office, Ms. Watts was 21 weeks and five days pregnant when she was admitted to St. Joseph Warren Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio, with vaginal bleeding on Sept. 19. Doctors determined that her water broke prematurely and her cervix became dilated; Ms. Watts also had a significantly elevated white blood cell count.

Doctors were able to detect cardiac activity but “recommended she be induced and deliver the fetus despite its nonviable status,” the report said, because she was at significant risk of maternal death, sepsis or “complete placental abruption with catastrophic bleeding.”

On her initial visit to the hospital, Ms Watts left after waiting (WHILE ADMITTED TO THE HOSPITAL AND BEING IN A HOSPITAL BED BEING MONITORED BY HER DOCTORS AND OTHER MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS) eight hours for a hospital ethics panel to determine whether to induce her pregnancy without legal ramifications because she was on the cusp of Ohio’s viability timeline, 22 weeks, Ms. Timko told The Associated Press. The hospital declined to comment.

Ms. Watts went home to “process the information she was told,” the coroner’s report said. She returned the next day with the same symptoms and left a second time without treatment.

On Sept. 22, Ms. Watts passed the fetus at home alone in her bathroom and returned to the hospital, where she received a dilation and curettage, also called a D and C, to remove the placenta, according to the report. The hospital notified the Warren City Police Department about the miscarriage and “the need to locate the fetus.”

The police found the fetus clogged in her bathroom toilet, the report said, noting that Ms. Watts had told the police that she disposed of what she believed to be the remains in a bucket in her backyard. The police then took the entire toilet out of the home and took it to a morgue, “where it was broken open” to retrieve the fetus, the report said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/us/brittany-watts-ohio-miscarriage-abortion.html

These are facts.

Yes the facts - instead of immediately getting medical care she had to sit there for 8 hrs while the ethics panel debated it.

Anyway, what you’re missing is that nobody on Brittany’s side denies that she may have been confused, should have stayed in the hospital, etc. That’s besides the point. The point is a) she did not get the medical care she needed and b) she is being charged with a felony for what she did with a miscarriage.

She was admitted to the hospital and received supportive care while the hospital’s ethics committee made sure the treatment the hospital gave her was legal. The hospital had to do so because of Ohio’s laws, and that is not the fault of the hospital. They had to protect themselves and made sure the patient was medically stable, she was not sitting alone in the ER, “sitting around.” She left because she did not want to accept the medical treatment they offered her. She should have accepted treatment, was she trying to prove a point? When someone is in a situation where their life is in danger, it’s not time to argue about politics and laws. Those things are not helpful to a woman who could die. Neither the doctors nor the patient made the laws and the laws cannot be changed by the hospital. If the hospital had refused to treat her, sent her home, or left her waiting in the ER without explanation, that would have been medically negligent. They all did their best to give this woman medical treatment she refused. If her family would have been present, they could have helped her through the process and help her make decisions and process her situation. Blaming the doctors, the nurse, and not placing any responsibility on a 34 year old woman to participate in her own lifesaving treatment is wild.

She was offered medically appropriate treatment and refused it, twice.

That’s her fault. People arguing about politics and religion don’t care about this woman or her baby, they just want to use her very sad situation to attack people they don’t like and debate politics. They don’t care she was very close to death, and her decisions caused that life threatening situation.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

D&C was not the only option. But continue to assume you know the case best!

An immediate D&C when she first showed up bleeding and with a nonviable fetus and an infection was the standard of care. Which she, incontrovertibley, did not receive.

It’s unclear what the the reports on her being “offered an induction” means. I’ll be really curious to see more information about it. What I strongly suspect is that the Catholic hospital admins suggested a workaround of inducing labor at 22 weeks instead of the standard of care (D&C) because inducing labor after theoretical viability is technically not an abortion under Catholic doctrine and Ohio law.

I think it's also unclear that the hospital being Catholic had anything to do with this. It sounds as though the issue was Ohio law.

Maybe but when I had an early second trimester loss the Catholic hospital I went to didn’t offer a D&C and I had to go somewhere else for it. It’s a common thing at Catholic hospitals, which is why despite their good intentions in other situations they are a menace to societal health care overall because of the things they refuse to do. And if a Catholic hospital is the only hospital around for miles it is a problem for women.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am still confused by all the details. I think that charging her was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and the police and prosecutor who participated in bringing those charges are doing absolutely the wrong thing.

However, I am not totally understanding the hatred being directed at the nurse. It seems to be based on three things.

1) She referred to the fetus as a baby. Which people do all the time. I am 100% pro choice. I do not think a fetus has the same status or rights as a born child. But I absolutely told my DH "Ooh, the baby is kicking" and my older child "There is a baby growing in mommy's tummy". Colloquially, lots of people use the word "baby" to refer to fetuses.

2) She called 911 about the claim that the remains fetus were in a bucket outside. To me, a fetal remains, or at least those that are far enough along to appear human in a bucket outside are a problem. They might be a problem because the medical team might want to test to them to see why the fetus died. They might be a problem, because no one wants a wild animal dragging that through your yard. They might be a problem because someone could be exposed to medical waste and potential germs. They might be a problem, because once she was past the trauma, Brittany Watts, who sounds like she was pretty dissociated and probably very out of it from blood loss, might have wanted to choose how to dispose of them. And, since I'm unclear what the nurse knew in the moment about the previous admissions, and the length of gestation, and the medical picture, might have been a problem because if she wasn't 100% sure that the fetus was delivered dead, then there was a responsibility to investigate. So, sending someone to the house to secure the bucket and investigate, and maybe look in the toilet once it was determined that the baby wasn't in the bucket, makes sense to me. And I don't know, other than 911, who you call to do that. So, in that moment, that might have been who I called.

I like to think that where I live, in Maryland, you could call police to help a woman secure the remains of her miscarriage, for burial or medical testing, without that woman then having her charged with a crime, and before this I wouldn't even have occurred to me that I was putting her at risk of being charged with a crime. So, I guess I am saying that while I think the prosecutor and the police are awful human beings, I'm going to withhold judgment on this nurse.

Now, if it turns out that there is a timeline where the nurse reviewed all the medical documentation before she made that call, or she was involved in previous medical care and so knew without a doubt that the fetus was dead, that might change my mind.

But, otherwise, I'm going to ask. Before you read about this case. If you were suddenly faced with a bleeding disoriented woman who may not have seemed like a reliable narrator (trauma and blood loss will do that) who was far enough along in a pregnancy that the baby might have been viable, and said that she had delivered a baby, but didn't have a baby or corpse with her, and said that the body was in her backyard unprotected, what would you do?

I would review her medical chart which would clearly say that she had a miscarriage.

And then say ooopsie, a dead baby is sitting in a bucket in a residential neighborhood, whatever. You would not attempt to locate a dead baby in a bucket? What would you write down about the baby? It disappeared? Make sure you are adhering to Ohio state law because you can lose your ability to practice and make a living if you do not.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

According to a report by the Trumbull County Coroner’s Office, Ms. Watts was 21 weeks and five days pregnant when she was admitted to St. Joseph Warren Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio, with vaginal bleeding on Sept. 19. Doctors determined that her water broke prematurely and her cervix became dilated; Ms. Watts also had a significantly elevated white blood cell count.

Doctors were able to detect cardiac activity but “recommended she be induced and deliver the fetus despite its nonviable status,” the report said, because she was at significant risk of maternal death, sepsis or “complete placental abruption with catastrophic bleeding.”

On her initial visit to the hospital, Ms Watts left after waiting (WHILE ADMITTED TO THE HOSPITAL AND BEING IN A HOSPITAL BED BEING MONITORED BY HER DOCTORS AND OTHER MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS) eight hours for a hospital ethics panel to determine whether to induce her pregnancy without legal ramifications because she was on the cusp of Ohio’s viability timeline, 22 weeks, Ms. Timko told The Associated Press. The hospital declined to comment.

Ms. Watts went home to “process the information she was told,” the coroner’s report said. She returned the next day with the same symptoms and left a second time without treatment.

On Sept. 22, Ms. Watts passed the fetus at home alone in her bathroom and returned to the hospital, where she received a dilation and curettage, also called a D and C, to remove the placenta, according to the report. The hospital notified the Warren City Police Department about the miscarriage and “the need to locate the fetus.”

The police found the fetus clogged in her bathroom toilet, the report said, noting that Ms. Watts had told the police that she disposed of what she believed to be the remains in a bucket in her backyard. The police then took the entire toilet out of the home and took it to a morgue, “where it was broken open” to retrieve the fetus, the report said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/us/brittany-watts-ohio-miscarriage-abortion.html

These are facts.

Yes the facts - instead of immediately getting medical care she had to sit there for 8 hrs while the ethics panel debated it.

Anyway, what you’re missing is that nobody on Brittany’s side denies that she may have been confused, should have stayed in the hospital, etc. That’s besides the point. The point is a) she did not get the medical care she needed and b) she is being charged with a felony for what she did with a miscarriage.

She was admitted to the hospital and received supportive care while the hospital’s ethics committee made sure the treatment the hospital gave her was legal. The hospital had to do so because of Ohio’s laws, and that is not the fault of the hospital. They had to protect themselves and made sure the patient was medically stable, she was not sitting alone in the ER, “sitting around.” She left because she did not want to accept the medical treatment they offered her. She should have accepted treatment, was she trying to prove a point? When someone is in a situation where their life is in danger, it’s not time to argue about politics and laws. Those things are not helpful to a woman who could die. Neither the doctors nor the patient made the laws and the laws cannot be changed by the hospital. If the hospital had refused to treat her, sent her home, or left her waiting in the ER without explanation, that would have been medically negligent. They all did their best to give this woman medical treatment she refused. If her family would have been present, they could have helped her through the process and help her make decisions and process her situation. Blaming the doctors, the nurse, and not placing any responsibility on a 34 year old woman to participate in her own lifesaving treatment is wild.

She was offered medically appropriate treatment and refused it, twice.

That’s her fault. People arguing about politics and religion don’t care about this woman or her baby, they just want to use her very sad situation to attack people they don’t like and debate politics. They don’t care she was very close to death, and her decisions caused that life threatening situation.

I don’t hear you condemning the Ohio law that puts hospitals and patients in this position. Or the non-medically trained politicians who put it into place.

Care to rewrite your thoughts?

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Anonymous wrote:I love how the forced-birthers are now clinging to the narrative that her wrongdoing was actually leaving the hospital …

This entire thread shows how divided people are and dogmatic about their beliefs. They can’t see nuance or consider another point of view. The pro lifers automatically assume she was in the wrong and the pro choices jump to the conclusion she didn’t do anything wrong at all and the event was just like their miscarriage. Really the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. The lack of medical care is concerning and it’s also concerning someone found a foot stuck in her toilet.

Most likely she has severe mental health issues since she’s telling people there is a body in a bucket in her backyard.

Most sane people don’t refer to second trimester fetal remains as “a body”.

Did the hospital give her a body bag to put it in if she passed it at home?

What was otherwise available to her for placing what she thought were fetal remains in? A bucket seems as good a container as anything else. Would you have preferred a paper bag? A baking pan? A shoebox? Please enlighten us what women are supposed to do with the bloody remnants of a pregnancy. Because most of us don’t know. I flushed mine down the toilet.

Unborn babies have bodies, they are developing humans.



This baby was 21 weeks old when born, and survived. The baby in this case was a week older.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.goodmorningamerica.com/amp/family/story/miracle-baby-born-21-weeks-heads-home-hospital-74848084

This woman tried to flush her baby down the toilet, but the baby’s body was too big and he or she became stuck in the toilet. The police who investigated found the baby’s body stuck in the toilet. The mother has scooped blood and feces into the bucket so she hide the fact she had given birth.

The hospital had admitted her twice before and she signed herself out if the hospital against her doctor’s orders. They made sure she was aware she needed medical care and could likely die if she left. She left anyway.

You are exactly why people hate religious pro-lifers.

You’re ignorant and judgmental and you want to hurt women.

People don’t need to be religious to know that it’s wrong to leave a hospital two times when you are pregnant and bleeding and in pain, against doctor’s advice.

People don’t need to be religious to know that hiding a pregnancy to the extent you are in danger of dying is wrong. Medical issues are private and privacy is to be respected, but trying to keep a secret and being close to death is just unacceptable. In america, we don’t leave stillborn babies lying about in public or on trash heaps or in buckets in our yards. Having sympathy for very complicated situation is admirable but this woman is being a free pass as she disregarded doctors orders twice, tried to flush her baby down a toilet, presented herself as she was in the midst of a serious hemorrhage to get her hair done, etc She told a hardworking nurse who was caring for her she didn’t want her baby and left her dead baby outside in a bucket in her yard and the nurse did her freaking job and is being attacked.

I don’t know how religion is your focus here, but taking the advice of your doctors during a serious medical crisis has nothing to do with religion.

This woman hurt herself by her actions.

I take it we are now going to be allowing women to discard their babies in public on trash heaps like people do in India and it’s going to be considered pro-woman and helpful to women to do so. That’s right, just throw your baby outside somewhere and go get your hair done, and if you hemorrhage to death in a beauty salon well it’s just fine. Some wild animal or stray dog will wander by and eat your discarded dead baby because women have rights and it’s not a baby.

This. I am glad she’s being prosecuted. The way she treated her baby and her lack of respect for life is disgusting. Can you imagine your own baby dying and putting him or her in the toilet??

If you’re defending flushing a precious baby down the toilet you should do some soul searching to see how you got to a point where you think that behavior is okay.

What the hell is wrong with you ?

Shame on you your mother raised an idiot and a uncaring uneducated sociopath

How dare you judge her!
How dare you bring your garbage uneducated crap to this forum. I am tired of women judging other women when it’s none of their business none zero . You have no idea what she was going through
Go back to the hole you climbed out if your mother failed miserably

Do you not think that first responders are emotionally damaged when they have to take a dead baby out of a toilet? Do you imagine that when a coroner has to do an autopsy on a dead baby, it’s peaches and cream? Of course it’s their job, and they deal with very upsetting situations daily, but they too are affected by this woman’s actions. She didn’t need to do this. She chose to do this. Everyone suffers (first responders, her family, the nurses that tried to help her, her hairdresser who had to contact her mom to beg her to get her daughter help, etc) because this woman was committed to keeping a secret that could not be a secret. Women have a responsibility to themselves first and this woman would not even accept responsibility for her own life. The medical personnel being attacked and blamed saved her life. They tried countless times to do so and she disappeared on them. She told the nurse she didn’t want her baby.

Every woman who has been pregnant knows what she went through, especially if they lost a baby. The vast majority of women who experience pregnancy complications do not leave the hospital after being admitted for treatment, much less leave two times.

She cleaned her bathroom and showered after she plunged her baby down the pipes. Has anyone here plunged their dead baby down their toilet and then clogged their toilet with the baby’s body?

If yes, why?
If no, why not.

It was a fetus and who knows what state it was in or what that toilet bowl looked like. Look at you with more sympathy for professionals who are trained to deal with these things but none for the woman who went thru lit alone.

Many of us have miscarried over a toilet and then flushed. You’re just not listening to us tell you that over and over again.

So did your dead baby clog your toilet? Mine didn’t.

I live in a state where D&Cs are still legal so I didn’t have to flush my dead fetus. I received the medical care I needed because sadistic, religious a-holes didn’t block it.

Are the religious a-holes who made her leave the hospital in the room with you right now?

She left on her own after being admitted twice.

So what?

You really lack the ability to imagine other people’s lives. That is a deficit.

So nobody here has clogged their toilet with their dead baby and almost died getting their hair done afterwards because some invisible religious people forced you to flee the hospital? No bloody sh*t buckets by your garage?

Are you a health care professional? If so, you are probably burned out and should quit. If you’re a pro-forced-birther, you’re not doing your cause any favors. If you are really just this hateful, get therapy.

But the one thing we will NOT let you do is lie. The hospital did NOT offer her healthcare. It REFUSED to provide the care she needed (an immediate d&c) due to its interpretation of Ohio anti-choice law.

You are completely wrong and I have posted information sourced and linked to the New York Times to show you are wrong.

The NYT article I read (and I don't know which link is yours) said that the hospital proposed induction, but she then waited 8 hours for an ethics panel to decide whether she was eligible. That's not the same as the hospital offering an induction. So, aside from the question of whether the induction was the best option, she wasn't actually offered an induction. She might have been told that an induction might be an option, or they might have offered to ask the ethics panel if she could have an induction, but she wasn't offered an induction.

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Anonymous wrote:I am still confused by all the details. I think that charging her was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and the police and prosecutor who participated in bringing those charges are doing absolutely the wrong thing.

However, I am not totally understanding the hatred being directed at the nurse. It seems to be based on three things.

1) She referred to the fetus as a baby. Which people do all the time. I am 100% pro choice. I do not think a fetus has the same status or rights as a born child. But I absolutely told my DH "Ooh, the baby is kicking" and my older child "There is a baby growing in mommy's tummy". Colloquially, lots of people use the word "baby" to refer to fetuses.

2) She called 911 about the claim that the remains fetus were in a bucket outside. To me, a fetal remains, or at least those that are far enough along to appear human in a bucket outside are a problem. They might be a problem because the medical team might want to test to them to see why the fetus died. They might be a problem, because no one wants a wild animal dragging that through your yard. They might be a problem because someone could be exposed to medical waste and potential germs. They might be a problem, because once she was past the trauma, Brittany Watts, who sounds like she was pretty dissociated and probably very out of it from blood loss, might have wanted to choose how to dispose of them. And, since I'm unclear what the nurse knew in the moment about the previous admissions, and the length of gestation, and the medical picture, might have been a problem because if she wasn't 100% sure that the fetus was delivered dead, then there was a responsibility to investigate. So, sending someone to the house to secure the bucket and investigate, and maybe look in the toilet once it was determined that the baby wasn't in the bucket, makes sense to me. And I don't know, other than 911, who you call to do that. So, in that moment, that might have been who I called.

I like to think that where I live, in Maryland, you could call police to help a woman secure the remains of her miscarriage, for burial or medical testing, without that woman then having her charged with a crime, and before this I wouldn't even have occurred to me that I was putting her at risk of being charged with a crime. So, I guess I am saying that while I think the prosecutor and the police are awful human beings, I'm going to withhold judgment on this nurse.

Now, if it turns out that there is a timeline where the nurse reviewed all the medical documentation before she made that call, or she was involved in previous medical care and so knew without a doubt that the fetus was dead, that might change my mind.

But, otherwise, I'm going to ask. Before you read about this case. If you were suddenly faced with a bleeding disoriented woman who may not have seemed like a reliable narrator (trauma and blood loss will do that) who was far enough along in a pregnancy that the baby might have been viable, and said that she had delivered a baby, but didn't have a baby or corpse with her, and said that the body was in her backyard unprotected, what would you do?

I would review her medical chart which would clearly say that she had a miscarriage.

And then say ooopsie, a dead baby is sitting in a bucket in a residential neighborhood, whatever. You would not attempt to locate a dead baby in a bucket? What would you write down about the baby? It disappeared? Make sure you are adhering to Ohio state law because you can lose your ability to practice and make a living if you do not.

Did she tell the patient, I’m going to call someone who can go pick up the remains in the bucket so we can get it out of the way and test them if you want to have them tested?

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

According to a report by the Trumbull County Coroner’s Office, Ms. Watts was 21 weeks and five days pregnant when she was admitted to St. Joseph Warren Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio, with vaginal bleeding on Sept. 19. Doctors determined that her water broke prematurely and her cervix became dilated; Ms. Watts also had a significantly elevated white blood cell count.

Doctors were able to detect cardiac activity but “recommended she be induced and deliver the fetus despite its nonviable status,” the report said, because she was at significant risk of maternal death, sepsis or “complete placental abruption with catastrophic bleeding.”

On her initial visit to the hospital, Ms Watts left after waiting (WHILE ADMITTED TO THE HOSPITAL AND BEING IN A HOSPITAL BED BEING MONITORED BY HER DOCTORS AND OTHER MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS) eight hours for a hospital ethics panel to determine whether to induce her pregnancy without legal ramifications because she was on the cusp of Ohio’s viability timeline, 22 weeks, Ms. Timko told The Associated Press. The hospital declined to comment.

Ms. Watts went home to “process the information she was told,” the coroner’s report said. She returned the next day with the same symptoms and left a second time without treatment.

On Sept. 22, Ms. Watts passed the fetus at home alone in her bathroom and returned to the hospital, where she received a dilation and curettage, also called a D and C, to remove the placenta, according to the report. The hospital notified the Warren City Police Department about the miscarriage and “the need to locate the fetus.”

The police found the fetus clogged in her bathroom toilet, the report said, noting that Ms. Watts had told the police that she disposed of what she believed to be the remains in a bucket in her backyard. The police then took the entire toilet out of the home and took it to a morgue, “where it was broken open” to retrieve the fetus, the report said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/us/brittany-watts-ohio-miscarriage-abortion.html

These are facts.

Yes the facts - instead of immediately getting medical care she had to sit there for 8 hrs while the ethics panel debated it.

Anyway, what you’re missing is that nobody on Brittany’s side denies that she may have been confused, should have stayed in the hospital, etc. That’s besides the point. The point is a) she did not get the medical care she needed and b) she is being charged with a felony for what she did with a miscarriage.

She was admitted to the hospital and received supportive care while the hospital’s ethics committee made sure the treatment the hospital gave her was legal. The hospital had to do so because of Ohio’s laws, and that is not the fault of the hospital. They had to protect themselves and made sure the patient was medically stable, she was not sitting alone in the ER, “sitting around.” She left because she did not want to accept the medical treatment they offered her. She should have accepted treatment, was she trying to prove a point? When someone is in a situation where their life is in danger, it’s not time to argue about politics and laws. Those things are not helpful to a woman who could die. Neither the doctors nor the patient made the laws and the laws cannot be changed by the hospital. If the hospital had refused to treat her, sent her home, or left her waiting in the ER without explanation, that would have been medically negligent. They all did their best to give this woman medical treatment she refused. If her family would have been present, they could have helped her through the process and help her make decisions and process her situation. Blaming the doctors, the nurse, and not placing any responsibility on a 34 year old woman to participate in her own lifesaving treatment is wild.

She was offered medically appropriate treatment and refused it, twice.

That’s her fault. People arguing about politics and religion don’t care about this woman or her baby, they just want to use her very sad situation to attack people they don’t like and debate politics. They don’t care she was very close to death, and her decisions caused that life threatening situation.

You sound like one of those people who say it’s never a good time to debate gun control because there’s always a gun tragedy that’s just happened, so it’s not appropriate to bring politics in while offering thoughts and prayers.

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

D&C was not the only option. But continue to assume you know the case best!

An immediate D&C when she first showed up bleeding and with a nonviable fetus and an infection was the standard of care. Which she, incontrovertibley, did not receive.

It’s unclear what the the reports on her being “offered an induction” means. I’ll be really curious to see more information about it. What I strongly suspect is that the Catholic hospital admins suggested a workaround of inducing labor at 22 weeks instead of the standard of care (D&C) because inducing labor after theoretical viability is technically not an abortion under Catholic doctrine and Ohio law.

I think it's also unclear that the hospital being Catholic had anything to do with this. It sounds as though the issue was Ohio law.

The hospital being Catholic probably had a lot to do with it.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am still confused by all the details. I think that charging her was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and the police and prosecutor who participated in bringing those charges are doing absolutely the wrong thing.

However, I am not totally understanding the hatred being directed at the nurse. It seems to be based on three things.

1) She referred to the fetus as a baby. Which people do all the time. I am 100% pro choice. I do not think a fetus has the same status or rights as a born child. But I absolutely told my DH "Ooh, the baby is kicking" and my older child "There is a baby growing in mommy's tummy". Colloquially, lots of people use the word "baby" to refer to fetuses.

2) She called 911 about the claim that the remains fetus were in a bucket outside. To me, a fetal remains, or at least those that are far enough along to appear human in a bucket outside are a problem. They might be a problem because the medical team might want to test to them to see why the fetus died. They might be a problem, because no one wants a wild animal dragging that through your yard. They might be a problem because someone could be exposed to medical waste and potential germs. They might be a problem, because once she was past the trauma, Brittany Watts, who sounds like she was pretty dissociated and probably very out of it from blood loss, might have wanted to choose how to dispose of them. And, since I'm unclear what the nurse knew in the moment about the previous admissions, and the length of gestation, and the medical picture, might have been a problem because if she wasn't 100% sure that the fetus was delivered dead, then there was a responsibility to investigate. So, sending someone to the house to secure the bucket and investigate, and maybe look in the toilet once it was determined that the baby wasn't in the bucket, makes sense to me. And I don't know, other than 911, who you call to do that. So, in that moment, that might have been who I called.

I like to think that where I live, in Maryland, you could call police to help a woman secure the remains of her miscarriage, for burial or medical testing, without that woman then having her charged with a crime, and before this I wouldn't even have occurred to me that I was putting her at risk of being charged with a crime. So, I guess I am saying that while I think the prosecutor and the police are awful human beings, I'm going to withhold judgment on this nurse.

Now, if it turns out that there is a timeline where the nurse reviewed all the medical documentation before she made that call, or she was involved in previous medical care and so knew without a doubt that the fetus was dead, that might change my mind.

But, otherwise, I'm going to ask. Before you read about this case. If you were suddenly faced with a bleeding disoriented woman who may not have seemed like a reliable narrator (trauma and blood loss will do that) who was far enough along in a pregnancy that the baby might have been viable, and said that she had delivered a baby, but didn't have a baby or corpse with her, and said that the body was in her backyard unprotected, what would you do?

I would review her medical chart which would clearly say that she had a miscarriage.

Which doesn't address what I wrote. If you knew someone had a miscarriage, and you thought a fetus old enough to look human was unsecured in their backyard, what is the appropriate thing to do? At that point, you don't know what the woman who miscarried will want to do with it. You don't know if the medical team will want it for testing. You don't know if some dog is going to drag it into the next door neighbor's yard where their children are playing.

Having someone retrieve the fetal remains, and secure them, seems reasonable to me. I can believe that, and not believe she should have been arrested.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

According to a report by the Trumbull County Coroner’s Office, Ms. Watts was 21 weeks and five days pregnant when she was admitted to St. Joseph Warren Hospital in Youngstown, Ohio, with vaginal bleeding on Sept. 19. Doctors determined that her water broke prematurely and her cervix became dilated; Ms. Watts also had a significantly elevated white blood cell count.

Doctors were able to detect cardiac activity but “recommended she be induced and deliver the fetus despite its nonviable status,” the report said, because she was at significant risk of maternal death, sepsis or “complete placental abruption with catastrophic bleeding.”

On her initial visit to the hospital, Ms Watts left after waiting (WHILE ADMITTED TO THE HOSPITAL AND BEING IN A HOSPITAL BED BEING MONITORED BY HER DOCTORS AND OTHER MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS) eight hours for a hospital ethics panel to determine whether to induce her pregnancy without legal ramifications because she was on the cusp of Ohio’s viability timeline, 22 weeks, Ms. Timko told The Associated Press. The hospital declined to comment.

Ms. Watts went home to “process the information she was told,” the coroner’s report said. She returned the next day with the same symptoms and left a second time without treatment.

On Sept. 22, Ms. Watts passed the fetus at home alone in her bathroom and returned to the hospital, where she received a dilation and curettage, also called a D and C, to remove the placenta, according to the report. The hospital notified the Warren City Police Department about the miscarriage and “the need to locate the fetus.”

The police found the fetus clogged in her bathroom toilet, the report said, noting that Ms. Watts had told the police that she disposed of what she believed to be the remains in a bucket in her backyard. The police then took the entire toilet out of the home and took it to a morgue, “where it was broken open” to retrieve the fetus, the report said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/us/brittany-watts-ohio-miscarriage-abortion.html

These are facts.

Yes the facts - instead of immediately getting medical care she had to sit there for 8 hrs while the ethics panel debated it.

Anyway, what you’re missing is that nobody on Brittany’s side denies that she may have been confused, should have stayed in the hospital, etc. That’s besides the point. The point is a) she did not get the medical care she needed and b) she is being charged with a felony for what she did with a miscarriage.

She was admitted to the hospital and received supportive care while the hospital’s ethics committee made sure the treatment the hospital gave her was legal. The hospital had to do so because of Ohio’s laws, and that is not the fault of the hospital. They had to protect themselves and made sure the patient was medically stable, she was not sitting alone in the ER, “sitting around.” She left because she did not want to accept the medical treatment they offered her. She should have accepted treatment, was she trying to prove a point? When someone is in a situation where their life is in danger, it’s not time to argue about politics and laws. Those things are not helpful to a woman who could die. Neither the doctors nor the patient made the laws and the laws cannot be changed by the hospital. If the hospital had refused to treat her, sent her home, or left her waiting in the ER without explanation, that would have been medically negligent. They all did their best to give this woman medical treatment she refused. If her family would have been present, they could have helped her through the process and help her make decisions and process her situation. Blaming the doctors, the nurse, and not placing any responsibility on a 34 year old woman to participate in her own lifesaving treatment is wild.

She was offered medically appropriate treatment and refused it, twice.

That’s her fault. People arguing about politics and religion don’t care about this woman or her baby, they just want to use her very sad situation to attack people they don’t like and debate politics. They don’t care she was very close to death, and her decisions caused that life threatening situation.

Oh, so the people who really care about her are the ones arguing that she should be prosecuted with a felony?

The more you blather on about her “bad choices” the more you fail to realize what we are saying, which is that this was a terrible and emotionally confusing situation for any woman to be in. Prosecuting her because she *flushed* - which countless women have done after a miscarriage - is barbaric and clearly intended to punish her for not acting like a “good” pregnant woman. The fact that she did not conform to this stereotype and got prosecuted for it is exactly why we are outraged. It’s terrifying.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

D&C was not the only option. But continue to assume you know the case best!

It was the safest option and the one the doctors recommended. Why do you refuse to accept that?

Please point out where I said it wasn’t the safest option. I’ll wait.

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Anonymous wrote:I feel for her. The last thing I’d want after giving birth (and a stillbirth at that) is to engage with any human, especially police officers. She must have been exhausted and emotionally distraught.

She went to an appointment with her hairdresser.

You've obviously never worked with victims of trauma before--or even done a basic google search on common trauma responses.

But besides all of that, I don't care if she left her home, hopped on a train and joined the Rockettes kickline at Radio City. It is insane to put a woman in jail for this alleged 'crime'.

“At one point, a physician advised Ms Watts that she should have her labour induced, a procedure that amounted to an abortion and would cause her to deliver the fetus but also put her at “significant risk” of death, according to those records obtained by the Associated Press.“

So the doctors at the hospital wanted to induce her and give her the abortion she needed, but she left the hospital.

Good lord you typed this out in the middle of your screed and don’t even seem to realize what you are saying.

Being induced for l&d which could put you at significant risk for death is NOT the same thing as getting a D&C which is fast and safer.

Are you this clueless about everything? Please share with us your near death experience giving birth or miscarrying

How is giving birth in a toilet, by yourself, safer?

A D&C is not giving birth in a toilet by yourself. Are you always this clueless?

I’m saying giving birth into a toilet isn’t safer than being in a hospital. She left AMA and birthed on her own. I’m asking how that’s safer. If the hospital was going to induce labor one would think that was far safer than doing it on your own.

If only they gave her that option.

Earlier that week, she was admitted twice to Mercy Health St. Joseph Warren Hospital when she experienced agonizing cramps and bleeding. (she was admitted to the hospital twice)

However, she left both times after waiting hours to see a doctor. (yes it takes time to see a doctor. The important thing was she was admitted to the hospital, in a hospital bed with medical professionals monitoring her condition. A doctor signed an order to have her admitted. The doctor who would be in charge of her treatment would be a different doctor. That’s how hospitals work. This woman was hiding her pregnancy from her family and couldn’t stay in a hospital because her family would ask where she was.)

Following the miscarriage, which she suffered at just over 22 weeks pregnant, Watts flushed the toilet.

When the toilet overflowed, she used a bucket to clean up. As she did not want anyone to know about the pregnancy, Watts then went to the salon for a hair appointment.

But the hairdresser was concerned and called her mother. Watts was taken to the hospital, where a nurse phoned 911.

According to transcripts, the nurse told a dispatcher that Watts was sent to the hospital earlier that week with bleeding and left ‘against medical advice.’

‘She came back in on Wednesday still bleeding and said, “Maybe I do need to be seen.” So we readmitted her and we were talking her through everything and she disappeared,’ the nurse said.

She said Watts admitted to placing the fetus in a bucket and putting it outside her home, and claimed that Watts told her she did not want the baby. ( Doctors couldn’t even treat her because she KEPT LEAVING. And now you all are attacking the medical system and people working in a high she refused treatment from?)

8 hours. She sat around for 8 hours while staff NOT her doctors dithered about whether she should get the safest treatment, a D&C.

Yes women hide pregnancies. This is a very human thing to do. This woman needs compassion. Not prosecution.

You are a terrible person.

Sitting around= admitted to the hospital, being monitored by medical professionals, big difference. Admitted to the hospital is not hanging out in the ER waiting room. There is a difference nobody here will admit to because it doesn’t fit their false narrative.

This woman hid her pregnancy and the life threatening complications. Her life was in danger. Her baby died. Instead of accepting the treatment that would save her life, she committed to hiding a no -viable pregnancy. Emotionally it is hard but if a person decides to put their own life in danger, how can anyone help them? It has nothing to do with religion or laws because nobody is judging this woman in a religious context and the hospital had admitted her for treatment.

You’re making up facts. She was sitting around in the hospital because Ohio denied her medical care. In any other civilized state or country she would have been immediately offered a d&c. It’s not even clear the hospital ethics panel ever approved her for a d&c anyway. This exact scenario (sitting around with a doomed pregnancy waiting for a medical emergency) has repeated in many states with strict abortion laws. Not sure why you believe something different happened here. BTW it’s also not clear that she got admitted vs sitting in the ER for hours.

You are severely lacking in your knowledge of the facts of this case because this woman was ADMITTED TO THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AND LEFT THE SAME HOSPITAL TWICE AGAINST THE ADVICE OF THE DOCTORS AND STAFF WHO WERE ATTEMPTING TO SAVE HER LIFE.

EXCEPT THEY WERE HAMPERED BY OHIO LAWS AND HOSPITAL ADMIN WHO WOULD NOT ALLOW THEM PROVIDE THE TREATMENT THEY WANTED TO PROVIDE HER.

THEY WERE TRYING TO TREAT HER AND SHE LEFT

No they were not “trying to treat her.” Treatment would have been an immediate D&C.

D&C was not the only option. But continue to assume you know the case best!

An immediate D&C when she first showed up bleeding and with a nonviable fetus and an infection was the standard of care. Which she, incontrovertibley, did not receive.

It’s unclear what the the reports on her being “offered an induction” means. I’ll be really curious to see more information about it. What I strongly suspect is that the Catholic hospital admins suggested a workaround of inducing labor at 22 weeks instead of the standard of care (D&C) because inducing labor after theoretical viability is technically not an abortion under Catholic doctrine and Ohio law.

I think it's also unclear that the hospital being Catholic had anything to do with this. It sounds as though the issue was Ohio law.

Maybe but when I had an early second trimester loss the Catholic hospital I went to didn’t offer a D&C and I had to go somewhere else for it. It’s a common thing at Catholic hospitals, which is why despite their good intentions in other situations they are a menace to societal health care overall because of the things they refuse to do. And if a Catholic hospital is the only hospital around for miles it is a problem for women.

Wow. Was that in DC? They actually refused a d&c even though the fetus was dead?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I am still confused by all the details. I think that charging her was absolutely the wrong thing to do, and the police and prosecutor who participated in bringing those charges are doing absolutely the wrong thing.

However, I am not totally understanding the hatred being directed at the nurse. It seems to be based on three things.

1) She referred to the fetus as a baby. Which people do all the time. I am 100% pro choice. I do not think a fetus has the same status or rights as a born child. But I absolutely told my DH "Ooh, the baby is kicking" and my older child "There is a baby growing in mommy's tummy". Colloquially, lots of people use the word "baby" to refer to fetuses.

2) She called 911 about the claim that the remains fetus were in a bucket outside. To me, a fetal remains, or at least those that are far enough along to appear human in a bucket outside are a problem. They might be a problem because the medical team might want to test to them to see why the fetus died. They might be a problem, because no one wants a wild animal dragging that through your yard. They might be a problem because someone could be exposed to medical waste and potential germs. They might be a problem, because once she was past the trauma, Brittany Watts, who sounds like she was pretty dissociated and probably very out of it from blood loss, might have wanted to choose how to dispose of them. And, since I'm unclear what the nurse knew in the moment about the previous admissions, and the length of gestation, and the medical picture, might have been a problem because if she wasn't 100% sure that the fetus was delivered dead, then there was a responsibility to investigate. So, sending someone to the house to secure the bucket and investigate, and maybe look in the toilet once it was determined that the baby wasn't in the bucket, makes sense to me. And I don't know, other than 911, who you call to do that. So, in that moment, that might have been who I called.

I like to think that where I live, in Maryland, you could call police to help a woman secure the remains of her miscarriage, for burial or medical testing, without that woman then having her charged with a crime, and before this I wouldn't even have occurred to me that I was putting her at risk of being charged with a crime. So, I guess I am saying that while I think the prosecutor and the police are awful human beings, I'm going to withhold judgment on this nurse.

Now, if it turns out that there is a timeline where the nurse reviewed all the medical documentation before she made that call, or she was involved in previous medical care and so knew without a doubt that the fetus was dead, that might change my mind.

But, otherwise, I'm going to ask. Before you read about this case. If you were suddenly faced with a bleeding disoriented woman who may not have seemed like a reliable narrator (trauma and blood loss will do that) who was far enough along in a pregnancy that the baby might have been viable, and said that she had delivered a baby, but didn't have a baby or corpse with her, and said that the body was in her backyard unprotected, what would you do?

I would review her medical chart which would clearly say that she had a miscarriage.

And then say ooopsie, a dead baby is sitting in a bucket in a residential neighborhood, whatever. You would not attempt to locate a dead baby in a bucket? What would you write down about the baby? It disappeared? Make sure you are adhering to Ohio state law because you can lose your ability to practice and make a living if you do not.

Did she tell the patient, I’m going to call someone who can go pick up the remains in the bucket so we can get it out of the way and test them if you want to have them tested?

No, answer the question. You are reviewing her chart. Where is the dead baby?

The Catholic hospital offered her medical treatment even though her baby still had a heartbeat. That shows the doctors knew the patient was very sick. Her baby still had a heartbeat, but the baby would not survive, and the patient needed urgent treatment. She left after they offered her medical care and then a second time after offering her medical care again. But somehow they are the monsters. Oh and the nurse is a monster because she did her job. And the dead baby plunged down the toilet is a monster too, for just existing.