June 23, 2022

As we await the anticipated fall of Roe and the subsequent loss of the constitutionally protected right to abortion, National Advocates for Pregnant Women today launched a first-of-its-kind, multidisciplinary guide to arm professionals with the tools and resources to reject the criminalization of pregnant people and their pregnancy outcomes — Confronting Pregnancy Criminalization: A Practical Guide for Healthcare Providers, Lawyers, Medical Examiners, Child Welfare Workers, and Policymakers.

Note: this bill failed in committee. A Louisiana abortion ban containing language that would have allowed pregnant women to be charged with homicide in relation to their own pregnancy outcomes, including abortion, is expected to be amended to remove such language after opposition from House Republicans and the state's governor.

NAPW Staff Attorney Samantha Lee testified in support of a California bill that will ensure that no one in the State of California will be prosecuted for ending a pregnancy or experiencing pregnancy loss. In her testimony, Ms. Lee shared a statement from NAPW's client, Chelsea Becker, who was charged with murder for experiencing a stillbirth in Kings County, California.

On March 18, 2022, a judge in Kings County, California reversed Adora Perez's guilty plea and vacated her 11-year sentence, sending the case back to the trial court for new proceedings. In 2018, Adora Perez, poorly advised by her court-appointed counsel, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter of her fetus, a crime that doesn't exist in California.

Remarks by Samantha Lee, Staff Attorney, as part of Attorney General Rob Bonta's press conference on 1/6/2022.

Thank you, Attorney General Bonta. My name is Samantha Lee and I am a staff attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

As an organization dedicated to advancing the civil and human rights of all people capable of pregnancy, National Advocates for Pregnant Women is honored to stand with Attorney General Bonta in support of this legal alert instructing district attorneys, police chiefs, and county sheriffs in California not to misuse the state’s murder statute to criminalize people for their pregnancy outcomes.

Adora Perez was charged with murder in 2018 after she delivered a stillborn baby at Adventist Hospital in Hanford, California. District Attorney Keith Fagundes claimed, without scientific basis, that the stillbirth was caused by methamphetamine use. Penal Code Section 187 punishes the “unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought.

Dear Friends and Allies,

I am guessing that the disastrous developments happening in Texas and the Supreme Court have already caught your attention. But just in case: a few weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court did not stop a plainly unconstitutional six-week abortion ban, Texas’s SB8, from going into effect.

In 2013, the Journal of Public Health Law and Policy published National Advocates for Pregnant Women (“NAPW”) peer-reviewed study documenting arrests, detentions, and equivalent deprivations of physical liberty of women between 1973 and 2005 in which being pregnant was a necessary element of the crime or a “but for” reason for the coercive or punitive action taken.