A Warren woman is suing the city of Warren and the hospital where she sought treatment before and after she suffered a miscarriage.
Attorneys for Brittany Watts filed the suit Friday, a year after a grand jury declined to indict her on abuse of a corpse charges stemming from a miscarriage she suffered in September.
The suit alleges that police and St. Joseph Warren Hospital staff conspired against Watts to have her arrested following the miscarriage. St. Joseph Warren Hospital is owned and operated by Bon Secours Mercy Health, a Cincinnati-based Catholic health system.
Renee Spence, an attorney at the Chicago firm, Loevy and Loevy, representing Watts, told Ideastream the incident caused Watts lasting harm.
“The hospital, the staff and its doctors colluded with police to not only to deprive her of care, but to put her liberty in jeopardy, compounding the trauma that she was experiencing as she miscarried,” Spence said.
A spokesperson from St. Joseph Warren Hospital said it would not comment on the legal proceedings due to patient privacy. Warren city and police officials did not immediately respond to interview requests.
Watts, now 35, visited the hospital three times in September 2023, when she was about 21 weeks pregnant. She first visited with pain and bleeding, and was told she had a placental abruption. The suit alleges she waited eight hours to receive care and eventually went home.
She visited the hospital for a second time the following morning after her condition worsened, and was told her water had broken prematurely, her cervix was dilated and she was developing an infection. Watts alleges she was told her pregnancy would need to be terminated because her life was at risk and her fetus was no longer viable.
The suit alleges that the gynecologist who saw Watts that day failed to offer to perform a dilation and evacuation procedure — or surgical abortion — on Watts. Hospitals that don't perform dilation and evacuation procedures are required to inform patients of their options for obtaining the procedure elsewhere, according to the suit, which alleges Watts was not provided that information.
Watts suffered a miscarriage in a home bathroom three days after her first hospital visit. She said she did not see the miscarried fetus amid the blood when she flushed the toilet, which overflowed, according to the lawsuit.
Watts returned to St. Joseph Warren Hospital for a third time seeking treatment. A nurse called police to report her for a crime.
That nurse, another nurse and a Warren police detective allegedly questioned Watts as she was hooked up to an IV in a hospital bed, according to the lawsuit.
An autopsy on the fetal remains concluded that the fetus died in utero.
Watts was arrested and charged with abuse of a corpse — a fifth-degree felony — through Warren Municipal Court. The case, which gained national attention, was dropped when a grand jury declined to return an indictment and determined there was no probable cause to support the criminal charge. The Trumbull County Prosecutor's Office publicly agreed with the grand jury's decision.
Prosecutors initially said Watts violated an Ohio law against abusing a corpse, in part because the fetus was near the state’s 24-week viability threshold when she miscarried and disposed of the remains.
Reproductive rights advocates said Watts' lawsuit could help preserve safe access to pregnancy care, and could help ensure that what happened to her won't happen to another woman.
“If people are not feeling safe to get the care that they need, that is a huge problem that will only continue to exacerbate these issues we have around maternal and infant mortality and vitality,” said Erica Wilson-Domer, president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio.
Watts was invited to attend President Biden's State of the Union address last year as a guest of U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty.
