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 legal expenses for her dealing with of a house miscarriage, won’t 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 legal expenses for her dealing with of a house miscarriage, won’t 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 therapy from legal prosecution – a risk they are saying has intensified within the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s 2022 resolution overturning a long time of abortion-rights precedent.
The new letter, spearheaded by the Democratic Women’s Caucus, references the case of Brittany Watts, an Ohio girl who confronted felony expenses after struggling a miscarriage final 12 months.
Hospital officers referred to as police after Watts got here in looking for therapy for her being pregnant loss. Watts was investigated and initially charged with abuse of a corpse below state regulation. The letter notes {that a} grand jury finally 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 analyze such instances, and to supply authorized and monetary assist to sufferers dealing with the specter of legal prosecution due to being pregnant outcomes. It additionally urges Biden administration officers together with Health and Human Services 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 House liaison, mentioned she was disturbed to see healthcare employees concerned in reporting Watts.
“You do not get to choose up the telephone, violate an individual’s HIPAA rights, after which say to this individual, ‘I’m consoling you with one hand and calling the police to have an individual arrested however,'” Beatty mentioned in an interview with NPR.
The letter describes Watts’ expertise as “all too widespread for Black girls, who disproportionately expertise adversarial being pregnant outcomes as a result 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’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health resolution.
In 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 should intervene to assist pregnant girls dealing with life-threatening problems below the federal Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. The Supreme Court 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, mentioned a groundswell of public assist for Watts was essential in prompting the grand jury to not transfer ahead with that case.
“Placing exterior strain on these techniques and calling for investigations of these kind of prosecutions really can have a cloth affect in stopping them,” she mentioned. “These issues are going to persist so long as individuals aren’t paying consideration. So having the administration’s consideration on that, I feel, can actually make a distinction.”
The White House didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.