Brittany Watts, heart, speaks to a rally of supporters, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, in Warren, Ohio. A grand jury determined that Watts, who was dealing with prison expenses for her dealing with of a house miscarriage, is not going to be charged. Congressional Democrats are utilizing Watts’ case to name for Biden to do extra on abortion rights and safety for pregnant sufferers.
Sue Ogrocki/AP
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Sue Ogrocki/AP
Brittany Watts, heart, speaks to a rally of supporters, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, in Warren, Ohio. A grand jury determined that Watts, who was dealing with prison expenses for her dealing with of a house miscarriage, is not going to be charged. Congressional Democrats are utilizing Watts’ case to name for Biden to do extra on abortion rights and safety for pregnant sufferers.
Sue Ogrocki/AP
Democratic members of Congress are urging the Biden administration to do extra to guard pregnant sufferers searching for medical therapy from prison prosecution – a menace they are saying has intensified within the aftermath of the Supreme Court docket’s 2022 resolution overturning a long time of abortion-rights precedent.
The brand new letter, spearheaded by the Democratic Ladies’s Caucus, references the case of Brittany Watts, an Ohio lady who confronted felony expenses after struggling a miscarriage final yr.
Hospital officers known as police after Watts got here in searching for therapy for her being pregnant loss. Watts was investigated and initially charged with abuse of a corpse beneath state regulation. The letter notes {that a} grand jury in the end declined to maneuver ahead with the case, however says “irreparable hurt has already been executed and we should guarantee this by no means occurs to anybody once more.”
The letter, signed by greater than 150 members of Congress, calls on the Biden administration to make use of federal sources to research such instances, and to offer authorized and monetary assist to sufferers dealing with the specter of prison prosecution due to being pregnant outcomes. It additionally urges Biden administration officers together with Well being and Human Providers Secretary Xavier Becerra to research conditions wherein healthcare officers could have breached the privateness of pregnant sufferers.
Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, the DWC’s White Home liaison, stated she was disturbed to see healthcare staff concerned in reporting Watts.
“You aren’t getting to choose up the telephone, violate an individual’s HIPAA rights, after which say to this individual, ‘I am consoling you with one hand and calling the police to have an individual arrested alternatively,'” Beatty stated in an interview with NPR.
The letter describes Watts’ expertise as “all too frequent for Black ladies, who disproportionately expertise antagonistic being pregnant outcomes because of insufficient well being care, and disproportionately expertise disrespect, abuse, and punitive responses after they search pregnancy-related care.”
In November, Ohio voters accredited an modification defending abortion rights within the state’s structure. That vote got here after a near-total abortion ban took impact in 2022 in response to the Supreme Court docket’s Dobbs v. Jackson Ladies’s Well being resolution.
Within the aftermath of the Dobbs resolution, Biden has confronted calls from some main Democrats to do extra to guard abortion rights.
The administration has taken a number of steps, together with telling healthcare suppliers that they need to intervene to assist pregnant ladies dealing with life-threatening problems beneath the federal Emergency Medical Remedy and Labor Act, or EMTALA. The Supreme Court docket has agreed to contemplate a problem to that interpretation from the state of Idaho.
Farah Diaz-Tello, senior counsel with the reproductive rights authorized group If/When/How, which has endorsed the letter, stated a groundswell of public assist for Watts was essential in prompting the grand jury to not transfer ahead with that case.
“Putting exterior stress on these techniques and calling for investigations of a majority of these prosecutions really can have a fabric affect in stopping them,” she stated. “These items are going to persist so long as folks aren’t paying consideration. So having the administration’s consideration on that, I feel, can actually make a distinction.”
The White Home didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.