Black women are being criminally charged in Republican states thanks to “pro-life” laws. The Associated Press notes “at least 210 women across the country were charged with crimes related to their pregnancies, according to the report released by Pregnancy Justice, an advocacy organization.”
CNN reports that a Black woman, Amari Marsh, was charged with murder three months after losing her pregnancy in 2023 in Orangeburg, South Carolina. A grand jury cleared her of that charge in August 2024, after 13 months:
On Feb. 28, 2023, Marsh said, she experienced abdominal pain that was “way worse” than regular menstrual cramps. She went to the emergency room, investigation records show, but left after several hours without being treated. Back at home, she said, the pain grew worse. She returned to the hospital, this time by ambulance.
Hospital staffers crowded around her, she said, and none of them explained what was happening to her. Bright lights shone in her face. “I was scared,” she said.
According to the sheriff’s department report, hospital staffers told Marsh that she was pregnant and that a fetal heartbeat could be detected. Freaked out and confused, she chose to leave the hospital a second time, she said, and her pain had subsided.
In the middle of the night, she said, the pain started again. She woke up, she recalled, feeling an intense urge to use the bathroom. “And when I did, the child came,” she said. “I screamed because I was scared, because I didn’t know what was going on.”
Her boyfriend at the time called 911. The emergency dispatcher “kept telling me to take the baby out” of the toilet, she recalled. “I couldn’t because I couldn’t even keep myself together.”
First medical responders detected signs of life and tried to perform lifesaving measures as they headed to Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg, the incident report said. But at the hospital, Marsh learned that her infant, a girl, had not survived.
“I kept asking to see the baby,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me.”
The following day, a sheriff’s deputy told Marsh in her hospital room that the incident was under investigation but said that Marsh “was currently not in any trouble,” according to the report. Marsh responded that “she did not feel as though she did anything wrong.”
…Marsh arranged to meet the officer on June 2, 2023. During that meeting, she was arrested. Her boyfriend was not charged…
When Marsh lost her pregnancy on March 1, 2023, women in South Carolina could still obtain an abortion until 20 weeks beyond fertilization, or the gestational age of 22 weeks…
The arrest warrant alleges that not moving the infant from the toilet at the urging of the dispatcher was ultimately “a proximate cause of her daughter’s death.” The warrant also cites as the cause of death “respiratory complications” due to a premature delivery stemming from a maternal chlamydia infection. Marsh said she was unaware of the infection until after the pregnancy loss.
Pascoe said the question raised by investigators was whether Marsh failed to render aid to the infant before emergency responders arrived at the apartment, he said. Ultimately, the grand jury decided there wasn’t probable cause to proceed with a criminal trial, he said. “I respect the grand jury’s opinion.”
Marsh’s case is a “prime example of how pregnancy loss can become a criminal investigation very quickly,” said Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice, a nonprofit that tracks such cases. While similar cases predate the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, she said, they seem to be increasing…
Holly Gatling, executive director of South Carolina Citizens for Life, wrote a blog post about Marsh titled, in part, “Orangeburg Newborn Dies in Toilet” that was published by National Right to Life. Gatling and National Right to Life did not respond to interview requests.
In Trumbull County, Ohio, a 33-year-old Black woman, Brittany Watts, was charged with felony abuse of a corpse after passing a nonviable fetus in her bathroom in December 2023, noted CNN:
Though a coroner’s office report said the fetus was not viable and had died in the womb, Watts’ case highlights the extent to which prosecutors can charge a woman whose pregnancy has ended – whether by abortion or miscarriage…
Watts went to a hospital three times in four days due to vaginal bleeding, a report from the Trumbull County Coroner’s Office says.
When she was first admitted to the Labor and Delivery Department at St. Joseph’s Hospital on September 19, “She was diagnosed with premature rupture of membranes and severe oligohydramnios,” the report states. In other words, her water had broken prematurely, and she had exceptionally low – if any – amniotic fluid.
“Although a fetal heartbeat was found, it was recommended by medical staff that an induction occur of the nonviable fetus,” the coroner’s office report states.
At the time, Watts’ pregnancy “was 21 weeks, 5 days gestation,” the report says. In Ohio, abortions are legal until fetal viability – which is generally considered to be around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy. After viability, the state can legally restrict abortion access unless the patient’s life or health are at risk.
However, “Brittany Watts signed herself out of the hospital against medical advice on 9/19/2013,” the coroner’s office report states. CNN has asked her attorney about why Watts may have left the hospital without having the nonviable fetus induced, as recommended by the medical staff.
The next day, September 20, Watts returned “for the same issue and left against medical advice again,” the coroner’s office report states.
Watts returned on September 20 expecting to be induced to deliver her preterm pregnancy, according to The Washington Post.
But for hours doctors and officials mulled the ethics of inducing labor for a woman who had been diagnosed with preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM), had no detectable amniotic fluid, was bleeding vaginally and had advanced cervical dilation, the Post reported. Watts eventually left.
Then on September 22, Watts returned to the hospital “for vaginal bleeding with retained placenta after a home delivery,” the coroner’s office report states. “According to medical records, Brittany Watts stated that at approximately 5:58am … she delivered the fetus into the toilet of her residence.”
The St. Joseph Warren Hospital staff called the Warren Police Department, which responded to Watts’ home, CNN reported:
When Warren police detectives were called out to investigate the scene, they discovered “the downstairs toilet was filled with blood,” the coroner’s office report says. “Looking into the toilet, it was filled to the brim with water, blood, blood clots and tissue.”
The coroner’s investigator checked inside the toilet bowl and “felt what appeared to be a small foot with toes,” the investigator’s report says. The toilet was later broken apart by Warren police detectives, “and the fetus was retrieved,” the report states.
An autopsy revealed the fetus’ cause of death was intrauterine fetal demise – meaning the fetus died inside the womb – due to severely low amniotic fluid from the premature rupture of membranes.
Miscarriage is most common early in the first trimester, often before a woman knows she’s pregnant. It’s less common to naturally lose a fetus more than halfway through gestation – often known as stillbirth. About 21,000 stillbirths happen each year in the US – about 1 in 175 pregnancies, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
However, “(t)here is no law in Ohio that requires a mother suffering a miscarriage to bury or cremate those remains,” Watts’ attorney (Traci Timko) said.
“Women miscarry into toilets everyday,” Timko wrote in an email to CNN. “In fact, the Ohio Legislature has created broad immunity to women for acts or omissions during pregnancy and has admonished that women should ‘in no case’ be criminalized for the circumstances or outcomes of their pregnancies.”
“The prosecution of Ms. Watts is tragic and unjust,” she wrote. “We will continue to fight.”
Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights slammed the criminal charge against Watts, saying it would deter other women who suffer miscarriages from seeking medical help.
“As citizens, we are outraged that the criminal justice system is being used to punish Ms. Watts who, like thousands of women each year, spontaneously miscarried a non-viable fetus into a toilet and then flushed,” the group said in an open letter to the Trumbull County prosecutor.
After her case received publicity, the charges against Watts were dropped, reported CBS Mornings.
STAT News reports the lack of knowledge of miscarriages and health care puts the U.S. behind countries with universal health care:
The dearth of knowledge about pregnancy loss and miscarriage is far greater in the United States than in other industrialized countries, according to physicians, policymakers, and researchers who spoke with STAT.
Countries with national health systems such as the United Kingdom have standardized medical records and better aggregate health data, enabling medical researchers to conduct studies and trials more readily, and to examine the physical, emotional, and economic toll of pregnancy loss. Nordic countries, too, have national health systems that provide more open access to data, enabling researchers to study the impact of loss to a greater extent than it is studied in the U.S.
(Sources: CNN, CNN, CBS Mornings/YouTube, STAT News, The Associated Press)