An Ohio woman who miscarried at home will not be criminally charged with abuse of a corpse after a grand jury declined to indict her, the Trumbull County Prosecutor’s Office said Thursday. Brittany Watts, 34, was arrested in October after she was accused of miscarrying her 21-week-old fetus over her toilet, then attempting to flush the remains. The fetus, which was found wedged in the toilet bowl, was determined in an autopsy to have died in utero. Watts pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of abuse of a corpse. Had she been indicted and convicted, she would have faced up to a year in prison and a $2,500 fine. The jury had been weighing if there was enough evidence for a felony indictment after a municipal judge ruled there was “probable cause” of a crime, though an attorney for Watts, who is Black, argued she was being “demonized for something that goes on every day.” The judge has since retired. The case drew national headlines and scrutiny from reproductive health advocates, and a GoFundMe set up to help Watts had raised more than $230,000 as of Thursday.
