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.

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.

Oklahoma District Attorney Craig Ladd publicly announced [in December 2017] that he is calling for the increased prosecution of women who are pregnant and alleged to have used controlled substances, despite his knowledge that such prosecutions are not legally supported.

NAPW, along with 11 other organizations and 27 individual experts, submitted an Open Letter to the Madison County, Indiana prosecutor, asking him to drop felony charges against a woman who experienced a stillbirth at home. An Indiana woman who experienced a pregnancy loss is being prosecuted for feticide and involuntary manslaughter, based on her alleged drug use while pregnant.

NAPW is in the Ohio Supreme Court supporting a young woman charged with homicide after experiencing a stillbirth. For now, the issue is whether her confidential statements to her doctors while she was pregnant can be admitted into evidence against her at trial.