Ohio was in the throes of a bit­ter de­bate over abor­tion rights this fall when Brit­tany Watts, 21 weeks and 5 days preg­nant, be­gan pass­ing thick blood clots.

The 33-year-old Watts, who had not shared the news of her preg­nan­cy even with her fam­i­ly, made her first pre­na­tal vis­it to a doc­tor’s of­fice be­hind Mer­cy Health-St. Joseph’s Hos­pi­tal in War­ren, a work­ing-class city about 60 miles (100 kilo­me­ters) south­east of Cleve­land.

The doc­tor said that, while a fe­tal heart­beat was still present, Watts’ wa­ter had bro­ken pre­ma­ture­ly and the fe­tus she was car­ry­ing would not sur­vive. He ad­vised head­ing to the hos­pi­tal to have her la­bor in­duced, so she could have what amount­ed to an abor­tion to de­liv­er the non­vi­able fe­tus. Oth­er­wise, she would face “sig­nif­i­cant risk” of death, ac­cord­ing to records of her case.

That was a Tues­day in Sep­tem­ber. What fol­lowed was a har­row­ing three days en­tail­ing: mul­ti­ple trips to the hos­pi­tal; Watts mis­car­ry­ing in­to, and then flush­ing and plung­ing, a toi­let at her home; a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion of those ac­tions; and Watts, who is Black, be­ing charged with abuse of a corpse. That’s a fifth-de­gree felony pun­ish­able by up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine.

Her case was sent last month to a grand ju­ry. It has touched off a na­tion­al firestorm over the treat­ment of preg­nant women, and es­pe­cial­ly Black women, in the af­ter­math of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jack­son Women’s Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion de­ci­sion that over­turned Roe v. Wade. Civ­il rights at­tor­ney Ben­jamin Crump el­e­vat­ed Watts’ plight in a post to X, for­mer­ly Twit­ter, and sup­port­ers have do­nat­ed more than $100,000 through Go­FundMe for her le­gal de­fense, med­ical bills and trau­ma coun­sel­ing.

Whether abor­tion-seek­ers should face crim­i­nal charges is a mat­ter of de­bate with­in the an­ti-abor­tion com­mu­ni­ty, but, post-Dobbs, preg­nant women like Watts, who was not even try­ing to get an abor­tion, have in­creas­ing­ly found them­selves charged with “crimes against their own preg­nan­cies,” said Grace Howard, as­sis­tant jus­tice stud­ies pro­fes­sor at San José State Uni­ver­si­ty.

“Roe was a clear le­gal road­block to charg­ing felonies for un­in­ten­tion­al­ly harm­ing preg­nan­cies, when women were legal­ly al­lowed to end their preg­nan­cies through abor­tion,” she said. “Now that Roe is gone, that road­block is en­tire­ly gone.”

Michele Good­win, a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Irvine, and au­thor of “Polic­ing The Womb,” said those ef­forts have long over­whelm­ing­ly tar­get­ed Black and brown women.

Even be­fore Roe was over­turned, stud­ies show that Black women who vis­it­ed hos­pi­tals for pre­na­tal care were 10 times more like­ly than white women to have child pro­tec­tive ser­vices and law en­force­ment called on them, even when their cas­es were sim­i­lar, she said.

“Post-Dobbs, what we see is kind of a wild, wild West,” said Good­win. “You see this kind of mus­cle-flex­ing by dis­trict at­tor­neys and pros­e­cu­tors want­i­ng to show that they are go­ing to be vig­i­lant, they’re go­ing to take down women who vi­o­late the ethos com­ing out of the state’s leg­is­la­ture.” She called Black women “ca­naries in the coal mine” for the “hy­per-vig­i­lant type of polic­ing” women of all races might ex­pect from the na­tion’s net­work of health-care providers, law en­forcers and courts now that abor­tion isn’t fed­er­al­ly pro­tect­ed.

In Texas, for ex­am­ple, Re­pub­li­can At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ken Pax­ton mount­ed an ag­gres­sive and suc­cess­ful de­fense against a white Texas moth­er, Kate Cox, who sued for per­mis­sion to skirt the state’s re­stric­tive abor­tion law be­cause her fe­tus had a fa­tal con­di­tion.

At the time of Watts’ mis­car­riage, abor­tion was le­gal in Ohio through 21 weeks, six days of preg­nan­cy. Her lawyer, Traci Timko, said Watts left the hos­pi­tal on the Wednes­day when, co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, her preg­nan­cy ar­rived at that date — af­ter sit­ting for eight hours await­ing care.

It turned out the de­lay was be­cause hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials were de­lib­er­at­ing over the le­gal­i­ties, Timko said. “It was the fear of, is this go­ing to con­sti­tute an abor­tion and are we able to do that,” she said.

At the time, vig­or­ous cam­paign­ing was tak­ing place across Ohio over Is­sue 1, a pro­posed amend­ment to en­shrine a right to abor­tion in Ohio’s con­sti­tu­tion. Some of the ads were harsh­ly at­tack­ing abor­tions lat­er in preg­nan­cy, with op­po­nents ar­gu­ing the is­sue would al­low the re­turn of so-called “par­tial-birth abor­tions” and preg­nan­cy ter­mi­na­tions “un­til birth.”

The hos­pi­tal did not re­turn calls seek­ing con­fir­ma­tion and com­ment, but B. Jessie Hill, a law pro­fes­sor at Case West­ern Re­serve Uni­ver­si­ty School of Law in Cleve­land, said Mer­cy Health-St. Joseph’s was in a bind.

“These are the ra­zor’s edge de­ci­sions that health care providers are be­ing forced to make,” she said. “And all the in­cen­tives are push­ing hos­pi­tals to be con­ser­v­a­tive, be­cause on the oth­er side of this is crim­i­nal li­a­bil­i­ty. That’s the im­pact of Dobbs.”

Watts had been ad­mit­ted to the Catholic hos­pi­tal twice that week with vagi­nal bleed­ing, but she left with­out be­ing treat­ed. A nurse told the 911 dis­patch­er that Watts re­turned no longer preg­nant on that Fri­day. She said Watts told her, “the ba­by’s in her back­yard in a buck­et,” and that she didn’t want to have a child.

Timko said Watts in­sists she doesn’t re­call say­ing the preg­nan­cy was un­want­ed; it was un­in­tend­ed, but she had al­ways want­ed to give her moth­er a grand­child. Her lawyer be­lieves Watts may have meant that she didn’t want to fish what she knew was a dead fe­tus from the buck­et of blood, tis­sue and fe­ces that she’d scooped from her over­flow­ing toi­let.

“This 33-year-old girl with no crim­i­nal record is de­mo­nized for some­thing that goes on every day,” she told War­ren Mu­nic­i­pal Court Judge Ter­ry Ivan­chak dur­ing Watts’ re­cent pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing.

War­ren As­sis­tant Pros­e­cu­tor Lewis Guarnieri told Ivan­chak that Watts left home for a hair ap­point­ment af­ter mis­car­ry­ing, leav­ing the toi­let clogged. Po­lice would lat­er find the fe­tus wedged in the pipes.

“The is­sue isn’t how the child died, when the child died,” Guarnieri told the judge, ac­cord­ing to TV sta­tion WKBN. “It’s the fact the ba­by was put in­to a toi­let, was large enough to clog up the toi­let, left in that toi­let, and she went on (with) her day.”

In court, Timko bris­tled at Guarnieri’s sug­ges­tion.

“You can­not be broad­cast­ing any clear­er that you just don’t get it,” she said in an in­ter­view, sug­gest­ing Watts was scared, anx­ious and trau­ma­tized by the ex­pe­ri­ence. “She’s try­ing to pro­tect Ma­ma. She doesn’t want to get her hair done. She wants to stop bleed­ing like crazy and start griev­ing her fe­tus, what she’s just been through.”

As chief coun­sel to the coun­ty’s child as­sault pro­tec­tion unit, As­sis­tant Trum­bull Coun­ty Pros­e­cu­tor Di­ane Bar­ber is the lead pros­e­cu­tor on Watts’ case.

Bar­ber said she couldn’t speak specif­i­cal­ly about the case oth­er than to note that the coun­ty was com­pelled to move for­ward with it once it was bound over from mu­nic­i­pal court. She said she doesn’t ex­pect a grand ju­ry find­ing this month.

“About 20% of the cas­es get no-billed, (as in) they do not get in­dict­ed and the case does not pro­ceed,” she said.

The size and stage of de­vel­op­ment of Watts’ fe­tus — pre­cise­ly the point when abor­tion crossed from le­gal to il­le­gal in most cas­es — be­came an is­sue dur­ing her pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing.

A coun­ty foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor re­port­ed feel­ing “what ap­peared to be a small foot with toes” in­side Watts’ toi­let. Po­lice seized the toi­let and broke it apart to re­trieve the in­tact fe­tus as ev­i­dence.

Tes­ti­mo­ny and an au­top­sy con­firmed that the fe­tus died in utero be­fore pass­ing through the birth canal. In re­gard to abuse, the ex­am­i­na­tion iden­ti­fied “no re­cent in­juries.”

Ivan­chak ac­knowl­edged the case’s com­plex­i­ties.

“There are bet­ter schol­ars than I am to de­ter­mine the ex­act le­gal sta­tus of this fe­tus, corpse, body, birthing tis­sue, what­ev­er it is,” he said from the bench. “Mat­ter of fact, I’m as­sum­ing that’s what … Is­sue 1’s all about: at what point some­thing be­comes vi­able.”

Timko, a for­mer pros­e­cu­tor, said Ohio’s abuse-of-corpse statute is vague. It pro­hibits treat­ing “a hu­man corpse” in a way that would “out­rage” rea­son­able fam­i­ly or com­mu­ni­ty sen­si­bil­i­ties.

“From a le­gal per­spec­tive, there’s no de­f­i­n­i­tion of ‘corpse,’” she said. “Can you be a corpse if you nev­er took a breath?”

Howard said clar­i­ty on what about Watts’ be­hav­ior con­sti­tut­ed a crime is es­sen­tial.

“For rights of peo­ple with the ca­pac­i­ty for preg­nan­cy, this is huge,” she said. “Her mis­car­riage was en­tire­ly or­di­nary. So I just want to know what (the pros­e­cu­tor) thinks she should have done. If we are go­ing to re­quire peo­ple to col­lect and bring used men­stru­al prod­ucts to hos­pi­tals so that they can make sure it is in­deed a mis­car­riage, it’s as ridicu­lous and in­va­sive as it is cru­el.”