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An Ohio woman who suffered a miscarriage and was charged with abuse of a corpse is suing the hospital and doctors that she says failed to give her proper care — and the police department that she says falsely arrested her.
Brittany Watts filed the federal lawsuit against Bon Secours Mercy Health, which owns St. Joseph Warren Hospital, where Watts was treated, along with three of its employees last week in the Northern District of Ohio Eastern Division. In addition, Watts also is suing the Warren Police Department along with its detective who investigated the case.
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The lawsuit begins:
In September 2023, Plaintiff Brittany Watts experienced an expectant mother’s worst nightmare — the pregnancy she very much wanted ended in a miscarriage. Ms. Watts should have received proper medical care to address her pregnancy complications and should have been able to privately grieve her pregnancy loss. Instead, Defendants deprived Ms. Watts of the medical care she requested and was entitled to. And after she miscarried, when Ms. Watts was in the hospital and most vulnerable, Defendants reported her to the police, interrogated her while she was tethered to her hospital bed with IVs, and caused her to be falsely charged with a felony. She was eventually cleared by a grand jury, but the harm remains. Ms. Watts now brings this lawsuit seeking redress for Defendants’ misdeeds and to hold them accountable.
Watts, then 34, was just over 21 weeks pregnant on Sept. 19, 2023, when she began experiencing pain and bleeding. She went to St. Joseph, a Catholic hospital, where doctors told her she was suffering from placenta abruption and admitted her. However, Watts went home about eight hours later after she “received no meaningful treatment or guidance,” her lawyers wrote. Her condition “significantly worsened” the next morning and she again returned to the hospital. Doctors informed her that her “pregnancy was doomed,” and she was at risk of “hemorrhaging, sepsis, and death,” until the fetus was removed according to the lawsuit.
But, her lawyers said, Watts “languished in the hospital — effectively untreated” for another 10 hours so she returned home. The next morning she went to the bathroom and “painfully miscarried.” Hidden in the toilet was the fetus which Watts says she never saw. She cleaned up some of the mess in the toilet and put it in a bucket and flushed the toilet, which overflowed. The fetus, less than a pound, had gotten trapped, according to the suit.
Watts again returned to the hospital, but while treating her a nurse “decided to call police and falsely report Ms. Watts had committed a crime,” the lawsuit said. Plaintiff lawyers claim hospital staff and police “worked together to fabricate evidence to falsely implicate Ms. Watts in criminal conduct.”
“They knowingly created reports and hospital notes that contained blatantly false information. As a result, Ms. Watts was arrested and charged with a felony: abuse of a corpse. She faced a year in prison for simply having a miscarriage at home,” her attorneys wrote.
As Law&Crime previously reported, the grand jury declined to indict Watts. Court records show the grand jury in Trumbull County returned a “no bill” on the charge in January 2024. An autopsy found no injury to the fetus, local CBS affiliate WKBN reported. Authorities said after she flushed the fetus down the toilet, she left the house for a hair appointment.
Police began investigating, and prosecutors charged her with fifth-degree abuse of a corpse in October 2023. The charge drew swift condemnation from reproductive rights activists who worried it could deter women who suffer miscarriages from seeking medical treatment. It came about a year after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which for decades had guaranteed the right to an abortion.
During a preliminary hearing in December, Assistant Prosecutor Lewis Guarnieri told a judge the issue wasn’t about how the baby died but rather the fact that it was flushed down the toilet and “she went on” with her day, according to the The Associated Press. The judge bound the case over for trial, which led to the grand jury hearing.
Watts’ criminal attorney told the AP that Ohio law lacked a clear definition of what constituted a human corpse. The attorney, Traci Timko, told WKBN she was “grateful” following the grand jury decision.
In the lawsuit, plaintiff lawyers argued that the hospital failed to give her the “standard of care” for a woman in her position, which is to induce labor or perform a dilation and evacuation (D&E) procedure. But St. Joseph does not perform D&E procedures. According to the suit, hospitals are required to tell patients of other locations that do perform the procedure. St. Joseph allegedly failed to do this. Instead, she was induced.
“Having been at the hospital for around 10 hours during her second day there, again with effectively no treatment, Ms. Watts went home. She was confused, tired, scared, frustrated, and sad because she had not been given the care she was told she needed,” her lawyers wrote.
After she miscarried at home and returned to the hospital, staff “falsely suggested” to police that the baby could be alive even though they knew the fetus was not viable, the lawsuit said.
Watts claims police falsely arrested her and prosecuted her without cause, subjected her to an “unconstitutional interrogation” and violated her due process rights. She also says St. Joseph violated the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act — which requires everyone who comes into an emergency department receive care — because she waited so long to receive care.
“We remain steadfast in our mission and our commitment to the patients and communities we serve with compassion and integrity,” the hospital said in a statement. “Due to patient privacy, Mercy Health will not discuss these legal proceedings.”
The police department has not released a statement.
