Black Ohio woman criminally charged after miscarriage underscores the perils of pregnancy post-Roe
Black Ohio woman criminally charged after miscarriage underscores the perils of pregnancy post-Roe
A Black Ohio woman who miscarried in her bathroom has been charged with abuse of a corpse. Thirty-three-year-old Brittany Watts, of Warren, awaits grand jury action.
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.
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Remember guys, both sides are the same. We should probably vote third party or something. /S
Biden could have prevented this by packing the court.
The outrage leads to donations.
That's an interesting precedent to set. That's your go-to retort?
Sure...and there's precedent already. The first two things Biden should have done in office was give us 15 justices and senators to DC and Puerto Rico.
However...the donations the Ds got for Roe being over turned were astronomical. It's lucrative for them to not fix problems and just bitch about them.
Wait, the SC has changed its count since 1869??? I had no idea we could keep adding justices without setting precedent.
Remember, the lesser-evil is still evil and democrats did nothing to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution.
Democrats love this because it means they don't have to improve.
What in ever fuck are you smoking? Is civics no longer taught in school ??? Walk us through the path to get this enshrined in the constitution. I'm really curious how that's happening.
I'm not going to take your comment seriously because you started off insulting me.
Learn to behave like an adult or you will be treated as a child.
Ok, let me try.
What? Is civics no longer taught in school ??? Walk us through the path to get this enshrined in the constitution. I'm really curious how that's happening.
There is that better?
I'm just baffled by how many comments I see displaying a complete ignorance of the legislative process in this country. "Why don't the Dems magically enshrine abortion in the constitution?" Oh gosh golly mr!
The Democrats could have passed a bill, but "enshrining it in the Constitution" would mean passing a Constitutional amendment. First, they would need a 2/3rds vote of Congress. That means that the Democrats couldn't have a slim majority - they'd need a large majority. Or they'd need to find Republicans willing to vote for a Constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. Basically an impossibility.
Even if the Democrats managed to get the Constitutional Right To Abortion passed, they would need to have 75% of the state legislatures pass it. Democrats don't control that name state legislatures.
So perhaps the Democrats could have passed a national law, right? Except that the Republicans would inevitably filibuster this in the Senate. The Democrats could have changed the filibuster rules, but not all of them supported changing these rules. (Mainly because it would prevent them from stopping the Republicans if the Republicans regained the Senate.) Any law that was passed would inevitably have been challenged up to the conservative Supreme Court.
You could definitely criticize the Democrats for not pushing harder to pass a law guaranteeing abortion, but a Constitutional Amendment was out of reach.
So...with all that said...what should compel anyone to vote for the Democrats since they've decided they're not going to actually pursue anything to help women's rights?
Did you read what I wrote? It's not that they decided they weren't going to do anything. It's that the rules of the government limit what they can do with a small majority. They can't just unilaterally decide that they are passing a new constitutional amendment with a few vote majority in the House/Senate. They could try for a bill, but there they are limited by various other rules not to mention the conservative Supreme Court. If the Democrats had a big enough majority, they could get more bills passed.
And that being said, what's the alternative? Allow the Republicans to get into power and hope that they don't take away women's rights too much? Many Republicans have already declared that they want a national abortion ban. Others have said that they want to criminalize miscarriage and ban contraception.
Voting third party (thanks to our First Past The Post system) won't work. Sitting out the elections and not voting won't work. The best thing to do is get as many Democrats in office as possible from local positions to the highest offices. Then, put pressure on the higher up Democrats to get a women's rights bill passed.
At this point, and with our current political system, not supporting the Democratic candidate is essentially supporting the Republican one.
It’s that the rules of the government limit what they can do with a small majority
That has never stopped the R's from steamrolling their agenda through.
It's time to stop making excuses and demand some action.
If the Democrats don't force as many votes on abortion rights as the Republicans did trying to overturn obamacare then what even is the point of them?
Yes, let's go die of exposure because there's a hole in the roof. Throw the whole house away just because there's glaring issues with it when there's no other viable choice in the vicinity.
What level of analogy do you need to understand that if you abandon the power you do have (ie minute nudge control of democratic establishment) you become irrelevant due to powerlessness?
To change what's acceptable, you shift what's considered acceptable, nip at the bits that are trying to stay with the old status quo, and repeat until you move the window to wherever you're trying to push it. That's how this works (if the window goes left for democrats, you would call that an "improvement"). Revolution is anomalous. Pushing for revolution and depending on the assumption of it happening leads to total powerlessness, which is less than what lefties have right now (right now I'd only call them mostly powerless).
You can't get away from dealing with the devil when Satan created the whole system in the first place.
They are. What did Democrats do to stop this?
Nothing.
They raised $80,000,000 off of Roe repeal instead.
Well, people did stop this in Ohio, specifically. Local organizers recently successfully petitioned to put abortion rights (which Republican representatives had been threatening) on the ballot statewide - voters got it passed, alongside marijuana legalization, all while facing (and continuing to face) significant antagonism and legal backlash from "elected" Republicans in the 2nd most gerrymandered state in the union.
Both parties suck, I'd go so far as to say both parties frequently do outright evil shit, but they are not the fucking same, and even if they were, that has yet stop people from coming together to get involved and improve their communities themselves. Observing politics near exclusively at the federal level tends to obscure that reality. I accept that this sort of doomerism can come from a place of ignorance, so I offer you suggestion: if you want things to get better, go help. Go find out what groups are actively working to induce local- or state-level government reform, or who are working to directly improve the lives of marginalized people in your community, and go help them. You can't exactly stop fed-level Dems from being useless hypocrites, but you can get involved with groups in your community to help with the work of bringing about positive change - and while that is harder than stewing about the state of things, it actually gets results.
I feel like I might've gotten a little off topic with this, but I just see this sentiment of "both parties are the same (so let's completely abandon electoralism)" so often online right now and I find it so exhausting and unconstructive.
Yes, actually doing something to fix the problem is exhausting and unconstructive. Let’s just continue to eat shit, instead. Much easier.
Just edited the followup reply to clarify what I was trying to say- I don't think it's what you thought it was, and I can see how it was unclear
Wait, why is raising money your problem here? TFG sells cut up pieces of fabric from a mug shot suit and NFTs to make money...
The only thing I'd relent on is that Dems trusted a Supreme Court decision to confer abortion rights, talk about Dems being dense, why rely on the highest court in the land to set precedent? How funny they couldn't foresee 6 Republican installed Justices tearing it out decades later, one (Alito) referencing a guy's treatise from 400 years ago.
Yeah, definitely the same...
I'm not seeing the narrative on Democrats trusting SCOTUS here, Roe was decided in 1973 under the Ford administration. The next Democrat president Jimmy Carter was highly christian & saw only to uphold the law despite disagreeing with it & only viewed expect in the life of the mother. Congress from the 70s-90s still depended on Southern Democrats for any Democratic majority & they were very much opposed to supporting Roe. Even as you get to Bill Clinton he later loses congress to a Republican majority.
Best cases were first term Democratic presidents Clinton & Obama who were both in no position to swing for the fences on large issues that would split their own party(Untested in Obama's time) & who would both see Republicans sweep majorities in congress at re-election time . We are only at this level of support due to hard work of Democrats over the years to rebuild after losing southern voters but it comes at great risk of losing the Senate. Clinton & Obama use to be able to count Ohio & Florida as blue states.
The game of getting consensus & then even winning a legislative victory is tough out there.
Appreciate you adding this context, I was a child in Clinton's administration so the nuance escaped me.
I read, before replying, that Dems made very loose efforts to codify but it didn't get the support (on the same side of the aisle) it should have.
You dropped this /s
It’s a good question. Democrats are the primary force capable of not letting this happen … but they did.
They had the presidency and Congress.
They had the power to hold up the entire legislative agenda until Roe was codified if they wanted.
Instead, they just raised money and did nothing else.
I'm sure the Democrats doing nothing for four years and shutting down the government because the Republicans won't help them codify abortion is gonna work out in their favor, lmao.
This is why critical thinking should be emphasized more in school.
No I didn't.
I'm honestly surprised you all saw Democrats use Roe repeal to raise money and otherwise didn't do jack shit to try and stop it even though they had the presidency and control of Congress.
Finally a true unpopular opinion that I fully understand.
Thank you for speaking your mind and explaining the events you see to shape your world