Pregnancy Justice recently helped get serious felony criminal charges dismissed for two women targeted in relationship to pregnancy.
A case against an Idaho woman who faced a felony injury to a child charge after alleged drug use while pregnant was dismissed in April 2017. Pregnancy Justice worked together with the Idaho woman's defense lawyer who argued that the child injury statue could not be used to criminalize pregnancy or actions while pregnant, and that if the court judicially expanded the law for such a prosecution, that would violate the woman's constitutional rights.
The motion to dismiss all charges also included a medical doctor's affidavit submitted in support of the woman. In this affidavit, Dr. Richard Hearn wrote:
"There is an unusually large consensus among professional medical associations--the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics--that punishment of women in relation to their drug use is harmful health policy. The recommended response to substance use and substance use disorders is health care, not punishment."
Pregnancy Justice, with local counsel in Idaho, also drafted and submitted an amicus curae (friend of the court) brief on behalf of several medical experts and the National Perinatal Association, National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, and National Council of Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in support of the defendant. As a result of these efforts, the woman's criminal case was dismissed.
In New York, a case against a woman who faced charges of manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child after she gave birth to a baby who passed away shortly after birth was dismissed.
Despite the fact that the state's highest court had ruled years earlier that a prosecution like this was not allowed, a prosecutor in the rural Southern Tier of the state charged the woman with these serious crimes based on her alleged use of a drug during pregnancy.
When the woman's criminal defense attorney contacted Pregnancy Justice for assistance, Pregnancy Justice wrote and filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the woman's motion to dismiss the charges. The amicus brief from Pregnancy Justice and other organizations articulated public health concerns as well as national medical organizations' policies opposing criminal prosecutions of women for alleged conduct during pregnancy. The brief also addressed constitutional rights violated by the prosecution. In September 2017, the court accepted the amicus brief and dismissed all criminal charges in this case.