California’s attorney general has thrown his support behind overturning a murder charge against a woman who delivered a stillborn baby with toxic levels of methamphetamine in his system.
Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed an amicus brief Friday backing a bid by Chelsea Becker to end the prosecution of her over a stillbirth in September 2019. Becker, 26, has been jailed since November.
“Our laws in California do not convict women who suffer the loss of their pregnancy, and in our filing today we are making clear that this law has been misused to the detriment of women, children, and families,” Becerra said in a statement, contending that the local district attorney “misapplied and misinterpreted” a state law against the intentional killing of a fetus.
“We will work to end the prosecution and imprisonment of Ms. Becker so we can focus on applying this law to those who put the lives of pregnant women in danger,” the attorney general said.
Becker has been in the Kings County Jail in Hanford, about 30 miles south of Fresno, since her arrest in November, with bail set at $2 million.
Police said in a press release that she admitted to using methamphetamine three days prior to the stillbirth, and that an autopsy on the stillborn baby determined it had toxic levels of methamphetamine in his system. Becker had previously lost custody of multiple children due to drug use, police said.
Kings County District Attorney Keith L. Fagundes could not immediately be reached on Saturday for comment.
The prosecutor told the Los Angeles Times that he had not seen the attorney general’s brief as of Friday afternoon.
“It’s shocking to me the attorney general’s office has taken a position without ever having contacted our office, without admitting whether they’ve read any police reports, without discussing these issues to say what makes this [case] different,” Fagundes told the Times. “And unfortunately the petitioner is attempting to couch this in terms of a reproductive rights case, and it’s not about that.”
Fagundes added, “We’re not sitting here seeking to lock up mothers who have miscarriages … But there’s certain conduct a government should not partake in, which is allowing people to use drugs to a degree that’s harmful to themselves and others.”
Becerra in the amicus brief argues 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 assume that pregnant women can guarantee healthy birth outcomes and therefore may 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 gravely concerned that medical misinformation may be the reason she [Becker] is currently in jail, including the unsupported assumption that substance use disorders should be treated as dangerous.”
