Brittany Watts, Charged with “Abuse of a Corpse” After Miscarriage at Home, Files Federal Lawsuit

“I don’t want what happened to me to ever happen to any other woman,” says Watts.

One year ago, Brittany Watts stood in a park in Warren, Ohio, addressing a crowd of people who had rallied to support her as she faced down criminal charges in a case that had focused national attention and outrage on this small Ohio town. Word had just come that a grand jury had refused to indict her for the supposed “crime” of miscarrying in her own home, as millions of women had done before her.

“I am truly grateful that you all have come to support me,” Ms. Watts told the crowd. “And we are not done fighting,” she promised.

Now Ms. Watts is keeping her word and continuing the fight. On January 10, 2025, her attorneys filed a federal lawsuit against both medical and law enforcement personnel in Warren, as well as against the hospital where she was deprived of essential care and treated like a criminal. The lawsuit asks a federal jury to hold the defendants accountable for the agonizing ordeal Ms. Watts suffered—both during her traumatic miscarriage, when she feared for her life, and for the months that followed, when she was charged with a felony and made to fear for her freedom.

“I don’t want what happened to me to ever happen to any other woman,” says Ms. Watts. 

Brittany Watts’s nightmare began in September 2023, when—in her 21st week of pregnancy—she began bleeding. In fear for her life and the health of her pregnancy, she went to St. Joseph Warren Hospital for help. There, she received the devastating news that her placenta had partially detached, barely halfway through her pregnancy. Premature rupture of membranes followed quickly, meaning Ms. Watts’s water had broken, and soon no amniotic fluid remained in her uterus. Doctors explained that her fetus could not survive inside or outside her womb.

Doctors were gravely concerned for Ms. Watts’s life, as well. Medical records show that her doctors concluded that she was at serious risk of uncontrolled bleeding, blood clots, infection, multiorgan failures, and respiratory arrest. They recommended inducing labor immediately, or else Ms. Watts faced losing the ability to have future children, worsening illness, chronic pain, permanent disability, or even death. Her elevated white blood cell count showed that infection was already setting in. One physician at St. Joseph stressed that action needed to be taken immediately, before Ms. Watts was “on death’s door.”

Despite these clear medical conclusions, however, the hospital effectively provided her with no treatment during the 18 hours she spent at the hospital over the course of two days. Frustrated, fearful, in pain, and feeling completely abandoned by the people who were supposed to be helping her, Ms. Watts went home.

Less than 36 hours later, she staggered in agony to her bathroom before dawn and suffered a miscarriage on the toilet before collapsing and continuing to bleed on the floor. No sound of movement came from the toilet because the fetus had died in utero. When Ms. Watts could move again, she saw that the toilet bowl was an indistinguishable mess of blood and tissue. Ms. Watts, who never saw the fetus and believed it was not likely to be intact, did as many women in her situation would have done: she flushed. Clogged, the toilet overflowed, and Ms. Watts attempted to scoop out the overflowing contents with a bucket. She assumed the fetal remains were in the bucket but did not know for sure. The toilet remained full of blood. 

Ms. Watts was disoriented and in medical crisis. She returned to St. Joseph and was admitted. The placenta remained in her body and she continued to bleed as her infection became worse.  

At this point, Ms. Watts had reason to hope her nightmare was coming to an end and that she would be able to mourn the loss of her pregnancy in peace. But a whole new horrific phase was about to begin.

“The nurse was rubbing my back, comforting me, telling me everything was going to be okay,” Ms. Watts says. “Little did I know, that nurse was the one who called the police.”

Despite knowing Ms. Watts’s fetus had been non-viable, knowing she was in a medical crisis, and having no reason to believe Ms. Watts had done anything wrong, a St. Joseph nurse—named as a defendant in the lawsuit—decided Ms. Watts was a criminal. Possibly with the blessing of her employer, the nurse called 911 and falsely reported that Ms. Watts might have given birth to a live, viable baby and abandoned it in a bucket.

Soon, police were raiding Ms. Watts’s home as she watched from her hospital bed on a home security app. At the same time, a detective, also named in the complaint as a defendant, was conspiring with nurses to invade Ms. Watts’s hospital room and interrogate her. Stunningly, the nurse who had called 911 personally participated in the lengthy interrogation with the detective. The two pretended Ms. Watts was in no trouble, and they told her she was free to go. But—sick, disoriented, distraught, and tethered to her bed by I.V.s—Ms. Watts was effectively trapped in this interrogation, and she was vulnerable to their manipulations. While her interrogators feigned concern for her, they also refused to accept her truthful account of what had happened and relentlessly insisted she was not being forthcoming. 

What resulted from that coercive interrogation was an intentionally false and distorted story, one in which Ms. Watts may have given birth to a live baby and abandoned it—or even caused it—to die.

In the days that followed, an autopsy was performed on the fetus, which had been recovered from the trap of the toilet, revealing that it had died in utero and had suffered no physical injury. Nevertheless, as the complaint alleges, the detective and co-conspirators “searched for a way to ensure Ms. Watts was charged with a crime.”

“What they came up with—an abuse of corpse charge—was an insult to every woman who has ever suffered a pregnancy loss. It was a cruel affront to the letter and the spirit of the law, not to mention to common decency,” says Julia Rickert, a partner at the civil rights law firm of Loevy + Loevy, which represents Ms. Watts. “For police and medical professionals to persecute a woman who had done nothing wrong, was in serious medical distress, and was coping with a devastating loss, is heartbreaking and deeply infuriating.”

On October 5, when Ms. Watts was still recovering from the physical and emotional trauma she had suffered, police handcuffed her outside her home and transported her to the police station. She was taken to court and arraigned. She learned she was facing up to a year in prison.

Word of her arrest spread quickly in the news and on social media. The private details of her medical trauma, her identity, her home address, and her phone number were publicized without her knowledge or consent. She was harassed by phone calls at all hours.

Months later, a grand jury concluded that no basis existed to believe a crime had been committed. Ms. Watts would not face trial. The prosecutor announced that he agreed with the grand jury that Ms. Watts’s alleged conduct was not criminal.

But the damage had been done. In addition to the unwanted notoriety, Ms. Watts spent three months living with the terrifying fear that she might go to prison. All this, while trying to recover, physically and emotionally, from her dangerous medical crisis and the loss of her unborn child.

“It was the job of all the defendants to protect Ms. Watts, and instead they failed her at every turn,” says Rachel Brady, a partner at Loevy + Loevy. “She would never have been forced to miscarry at home if St. Joseph Warren Hospital had given her the care she needed. They risked her life, and abandoned her to manage on her own, making the inevitable loss of her fetus more physically dangerous and emotionally devastating than it ever should have been.

“And then—though you wouldn’t think it possible—they somehow made the situation even worse, by weaponizing their own neglect against Ms. Watts, in order to bring an illegal and unprecedented prosecution down upon her. She should have been home grieving, and instead she was being led away in handcuffs.”

The lawsuit names employees at St. Joseph Warren Hospital, its parent company Bon Secours Mercy Health, a local detective Nicholas Carney, and Carney’s employer, the City of Warren. It charges them with multiple violations of Ms. Watt’s rights, including constitutional violations, violations of the Emergency Medical Treatment & Labor Act (EMTALA), medical negligence, violations of medical privacy rights, malicious prosecution, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Ms. Watts is represented by attorneys Jon Loevy, Renee Spence, Rachel Brady, and Julia Rickert of the Chicago-based law firm of Loevy + Loevy.

Ms. Watts’s case has drawn national attention and interest, particularly from reproductive rights advocates monitoring the shifting threats to women’s health and civil liberties since the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson overturned the protections of Roe v. Wade.

Michele Goodwin, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, has called women like Ms. Watts “canaries in the coal mine” in a post-Dobbs nation in which pregnant individuals will increasingly face “hyper-vigilant policing.“ Black women like Ms. Watts, Goodwin told the Associated Press, will be particularly vulnerable, as they are already ten times more likely than white women to have child protective services and law enforcement called on them when seeking prenatal care.

“Pregnancy outcomes for people of color are so much more likely to be questioned and to result in criminalization,” agrees Jessie Hill, law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

In a 2024 letter urging President Biden to take action to protect pregnant people, Congressional Democrats wrote that “when individuals like Ms. Watts cannot seek medical care for pregnancy-related conditions without fear of discrimination and criminalization, our health care system and our justice system have failed.”

Brittany Watts—who, before this experience, would have described herself as a shy, quiet, mostly anonymous person—is very aware of the larger significance of her case, and that’s why she won’t stop fighting for justice and accountability.

“I grew up an only child, but I have hundreds of thousands of sisters across the world,” she has said.

It is this strength and determination, her attorneys say, that gives them confidence in the fight ahead, and which should give the other side pause.

“Any system that would turn away a pregnant woman in crisis, and then attempt to punish her for managing her traumatic condition alone, is irretrievably broken,” says Renee Spence, partner at Loevy + Loevy. “But the defendants in this case underestimated Brittany. She’s resilient, she’s a fighter, and she’s determined to use this tragedy to hold the wrongdoers accountable and to create systemic change.”

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A copy of the complaint, Case: 4:25-cv-00049, can be found here.

For all media inquiries and requests for statements from Ms. Watts or her attorneys, please contact Michael McDunnah, Director of Communications at Loevy + Loevy, at 312.371.5871 or mcdunnah@loevy.com.

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