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.
Unrelated fun fact on child tax credits: There is a section of the internal revenue code that states if your child has been kidnapped, you can still claim the dependent.
This means that at some point in time, somebody lost a child, and their priority was maintaining that sweet, sweet credit to the point that they went to court to argue the matter.
Edit: It’s in Internal Revenue Code section 152
(6)Treatment of missing children (A)In general Solely for the purposes referred to in subparagraph (B), a child of the taxpayer— (i)who is presumed by law enforcement authorities to have been kidnapped by someone who is not a member of the family of such child or the taxpayer, and (ii)who had, for the taxable year in which the kidnapping occurred, the same principal place of abode as the taxpayer for more than one-half of the portion of such year before the date of the kidnapping, shall be treated as meeting the requirement of subsection ©(1)(B) with respect to a taxpayer for all taxable years ending during the period that the child is kidnapped.
You’re making it sound like it’s definitely the parent who is somehow being cruddy.
Lawsuits over tax interpretation don’t happen until years after the fact and they’re initiated by the IRS.
Alternative explanation: someone’s kid was kidnapped, so they took their taxes to a tax prep person and told them to deal with it. Tax prep person checked the boxes for the credit and submitted the taxes.
Later, the IRS says you can’t claim them as a dependent and that they don’t live in your house without providing an alternative address.
The IRS sues HR block as the agent of the taxpayer and five years later a judge says that you actually can, so the code is updated and a new checkbox added.
You bring up a good point. Unfortunately I don’t have access to case law research to trace the origins of the statute.
Nah, I’m pretty sure it was the parent of a kidnapping victim who lobbied their congressperson to make sure their missing kid didn’t increase their tax burden.
I mean, if the kid hadn’t been so obsessed with free candy, it wouldn’t have even been an issue.
I’m hoping there an /s at the end.
I’m always amazed that people would need to see an /s to understand blanantly obvious in your face sarcasm.
Especially when punctuated with a joke about blaming a kidnapped child for taking the free candy.
Think about what site you’re on for five seconds.
I have ADHD and autism. I do not see subtleties easily.
I don’t think that is how it happened. It probably happened with all the bullshit that goes down with divorce.
It says in there kidnapped by somebody who is not a family matter, so that’s probably not the origin.
Unfortunately, I don’t have access to legal citators anymore, so I don’t think I’ve got the resources to find the true origins. I haven’t thought about this in years, and now I’m super curious.