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.
A small part of me wants to see them try it. There is a legal means of doing this that has never been tested. There is something amusing about letting someone who has done nothing except being critical handed power that they have no ability to use.
Imagine all those DeSantos types actually given the task of sorting out the constitution. They don’t know how to write an amendment, they wouldn’t be able to agree on wording, they would have no clue how the courts would apply the wording, they aren’t even sure if it would stick because again no one has tried it. It would be who knows how many tens of millions of dollars in lawyer fees and conference hall rentals and travel expenses and committees all to pass something that would break on the first challenge.
But that’s not the way legislation works. The law is written, then it is voted in my representatives, then it is challenged by parties that fall foul of it. Waiting until the very last stage is the least likely method to be successful.