Democratic Women's Caucus, including New Mexico Congresswoman, urges White House to prevent miscarriages from being criminalized

The Democratic Women’s Caucus, led in part by co-vice chair and New Mexico Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández, called on the White House to use existing privacy laws to prevent pregnancy outcomes, like having an abortion or miscarriage, from being criminalized.

The caucus sent a letter signed by over 150 House Democrats asking the White House, the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate prosecutions of pregnancy outcomes as an unlawful form of sex discrimination and to use the Affordable Care Act against federally funded health care providers that report pregnancy outcomes to law enforcement.

The letter comes after the high-profile case of Brittany Watts, an Ohio woman who was charged with a felony after her miscarriage into a toilet at her home last year. After flushing and plunging the toilet, police charged Watts with abuse of a corpse, the Associated Press reported. A nurse treating Watts reported the incident to police. A grand jury decided in January that Watts would not be charged.

“I myself have suffered miscarriage,” Leger Fernández said. “I myself almost died during pregnancy, and there is nothing scarier than to know you might both lose your own life and lose the child that you thought you were going to be carrying inside of you. And to think, to think that when you go for help, instead of getting help, you’re getting handcuffed.”

Leger Fernández said Democrats have worked on legislation that would consider how health data could become criminal evidence, but that legislation will likely not be brought to the House floor until 2025 at the earliest, because House Republicans would not allow it to be heard.