The California Attorney General has thrown his support behind the reversal of a murder charge against a woman who delivered a dead baby with toxic levels of methamphetamine in his system.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed an amicus note Friday in support of a bid by Chelsea Becker to end her prosecution over a silent birth in September 2019. Becker, 26, has been jailed since November.
“Our laws in California condemn women who suffer the loss of their pregnancies, and in our submission today we make it clear that this law has been abused to the detriment of women, children and families,” Becerra said in a statement, opposing the local district attorney misapplying a state law and misinterpreting it against the intentional killing of a fetus.
“We will work to end Ms. Becker’s persecution and imprisonment so that we can focus on applying this law to those who endanger the lives of pregnant women,” the attorney general said.
Becker has been on bail for $ 2 million since her arrest in November at the Kings County Jail in Hanford, about 30 miles south of Fresno.
Police said in a press release that they allowed methamphetamine to be used three days before the stillbirth, and that an autopsy on the dead baby determined that it had toxic levels of methamphetamine in its system. Becker had previously lost control of multiple children due to drug use, police said.
Kings County District Attorney Keith L. Fagundes could not be immediately reached for comment Saturday.
The prosecutor told the Los Angeles Times that he had not seen the attorney general’s letter since Friday afternoon.
“It is shocking to me that the lawyer’s office has taken a position without ever contacting our office, without acknowledging whether they have read political reports, without discussing these issues to say what this makes [case] otherwise, ”Fagundes told the Times. “And unfortunately, the caregiver is trying to couch this in terms of a reproductive rights case, and it’s not about that.”
Fagunden added, “We are not sitting here looking for locked up mothers who have miscarriages … But there are certain behaviors that a government should not participate in, which allow people to use drugs to a degree that is harmful. is for themselves and others. “
Becerra in the amicus letter claims that the state law against the murder of a fetus does not apply to women whose actions result in pregnancy loss.
Two doctors who wrote a letter to the courts in support of Becker said her arrest “seems to suggest that pregnant women can guarantee a healthy birth outcome and therefore be held criminally responsible if they do not.”
Drs. Mishka Terplan and Tricia Wright, who said they have expertise in obstetrics, gynecology and substance abuse, wrote in the January letter “We are seriously concerned that medical misinformation may be the reason they [Becker] is currently in jail, including the unsupported assumption that substance abuse disorders should be treated as dangerous. “
