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Brittany Watts, middle, speaks to a rally of supporters, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, in Warren, Ohio. A grand jury determined that Watts, who was going through prison costs 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, middle, speaks to a rally of supporters, Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, in Warren, Ohio. A grand jury determined that Watts, who was going through prison costs 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 looking for medical remedy from prison prosecution – a risk they are saying has intensified within the aftermath of the Supreme Courtroom’s 2022 resolution overturning many years of abortion-rights precedent.
The brand new letter, spearheaded by the Democratic Girls’s Caucus, references the case of Brittany Watts, an Ohio lady who faced felony charges after struggling a miscarriage final yr.
Hospital officers known as police after Watts got here in looking for remedy for her being pregnant loss. Watts was investigated and initially charged with abuse of a corpse underneath state regulation. The letter notes {that a} grand jury finally declined to maneuver ahead with the case, however says “irreparable hurt has already been carried out 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 analyze such instances, and to supply authorized and monetary assist to sufferers going through 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 analyze conditions wherein healthcare officers might have breached the privateness of pregnant sufferers.
Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty, the DWC’s White Home liaison, stated she was disturbed to see healthcare employees concerned in reporting Watts.
“You do not get to choose up the cellphone, violate an individual’s HIPAA rights, after which say to this particular person, ‘I am consoling you with one hand and calling the police to have an individual arrested however,'” Beatty stated in an interview with NPR.
The letter describes Watts’ expertise as “all too widespread for Black girls, who disproportionately expertise adversarial being pregnant outcomes resulting from insufficient well being care, and disproportionately expertise disrespect, abuse, and punitive responses once they search pregnancy-related care.”
In November, Ohio voters approved 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 Courtroom’s Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being resolution.
Within the aftermath of the Dobbs resolution, Biden has faced 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 must intervene to assist pregnant girls going through life-threatening issues underneath the federal Emergency Medical Remedy and Labor Act, or EMTALA. The Supreme Courtroom has agreed to contemplate a challenge 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 programs and calling for investigations of these kinds of prosecutions truly can have a fabric impression 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 believe, can actually make a distinction.”
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