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.
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This story is absolutely terrible but it’s, sadly, important to keep them visible so “moderates” know exactly what will happen if republicans take control on a national level. This is the future for all women if they were to take the WH and both chambers of Congress. They already have the Supreme Court for at least 15-20 years even if a Republican is never elected President again.
Far worse than that, Republicans are vying for and have run practice sessions for a “Convention of the States”, where basically states (which are predominantly Republican controlled, in spite of population distributions) can come together and decide which Federal laws they want to adhere to.
Basically, the situation you’re fear mongering over is far closer than even you make out it to be.
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Remember guys, both sides are the same. We should probably vote third party or something. /S
Remember, the lesser-evil is still evil and democrats did nothing to enshrine abortion rights in the constitution.
Democrats love this because it means they don’t have to improve.
The Democrats could have passed a bill, but “enshrining it in the Constitution” would mean passing a Constitutional amendment. First, they would need a 2/3rds vote of Congress. That means that the Democrats couldn’t have a slim majority - they’d need a large majority. Or they’d need to find Republicans willing to vote for a Constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. Basically an impossibility.
Even if the Democrats managed to get the Constitutional Right To Abortion passed, they would need to have 75% of the state legislatures pass it. Democrats don’t control that name state legislatures.
So perhaps the Democrats could have passed a national law, right? Except that the Republicans would inevitably filibuster this in the Senate. The Democrats could have changed the filibuster rules, but not all of them supported changing these rules. (Mainly because it would prevent them from stopping the Republicans if the Republicans regained the Senate.) Any law that was passed would inevitably have been challenged up to the conservative Supreme Court.
You could definitely criticize the Democrats for not pushing harder to pass a law guaranteeing abortion, but a Constitutional Amendment was out of reach.
So…with all that said…what should compel anyone to vote for the Democrats since they’ve decided they’re not going to actually pursue anything to help women’s rights?
Did you read what I wrote? It’s not that they decided they weren’t going to do anything. It’s that the rules of the government limit what they can do with a small majority. They can’t just unilaterally decide that they are passing a new constitutional amendment with a few vote majority in the House/Senate. They could try for a bill, but there they are limited by various other rules not to mention the conservative Supreme Court. If the Democrats had a big enough majority, they could get more bills passed.
And that being said, what’s the alternative? Allow the Republicans to get into power and hope that they don’t take away women’s rights too much? Many Republicans have already declared that they want a national abortion ban. Others have said that they want to criminalize miscarriage and ban contraception.
Voting third party (thanks to our First Past The Post system) won’t work. Sitting out the elections and not voting won’t work. The best thing to do is get as many Democrats in office as possible from local positions to the highest offices. Then, put pressure on the higher up Democrats to get a women’s rights bill passed.
At this point, and with our current political system, not supporting the Democratic candidate is essentially supporting the Republican one.
It’s that the rules of the government limit what they can do with a small majority
That has never stopped the R’s from steamrolling their agenda through.
It’s time to stop making excuses and demand some action.
Biden could have prevented this by packing the court.
The outrage leads to donations.
That’s an interesting precedent to set. That’s your go-to retort?
Sure…and there’s precedent already. The first two things Biden should have done in office was give us 15 justices and senators to DC and Puerto Rico.
However…the donations the Ds got for Roe being over turned were astronomical. It’s lucrative for them to not fix problems and just bitch about them.
You need to show me a birth and death certificate for that to be a corpse.
And then she gets a child credit in her taxes.
TL;DR her pregnancy was non-viable. She had a miscarriage, into her toilet at home. She tried to plunger the “blockage”, and was subsequently charged with a crime.
Also she was black. For some reason that’s important enough to be mentioned several times.
Please help this nonamerican understand why her skin colour is relevant?
Because in a country with racism in many areas it is always a part of the topic. The medical system already has issues with treatment of black patients. And law enforcement has severe known bias.
Not saying that is the case here but it is often a part of the story.
This the Future Republicans want for their Daughters!
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… It’s all so tiresome. Woman > Unborn/zygote/dead
