Ohioan’s horrifying experience

Regarding the story “Miscarriage spurs criminal charges” (Dec. 19): As a survivor of a 24-week gestation “spontaneous abortion,” I am aghast at the treatment that Ohio woman Brittany Watts received. Please know that any loss of a baby is tragic.

While reading her story about the last days of her pregnancy, I noticed many similarities with Watts. I bled (as a 30-year-old middle-class white woman with good insurance who was followed by her OB-GYN for months) like Watts did, I delivered my baby like she did; I mourned in shock and great pain right after the “birth” of our daughter.

As opposed to Watts, I was followed as an inpatient at the hospital for three days, bleeding in bed and receiving blood transfusions and medications to try to stop the progression of the labor. Watts was admitted to the hospital twice because of vaginal bleeding, but she wasn’t treated. I also bled for days, which led to the spontaneous abortion of our daughter.

In a sterile hospital room, our daughter was delivered at 24 weeks gestation, weighing 1.5 pounds. We were beyond devastated and spent months in mourning. Look at the way I was treated. Look at the way Watts was ignored and then arrested. My daughter would have also been delivered into a toilet, like what happened with Watts, if I’d been home and bleeding and laboring for days.

What is wrong with this country’s uneducated, inexperienced members of male-dominated legislatures who feel they deserve the power to control a woman’s body for her?

— Melanie S. Wolf, New Haven, Connecticut