Charges have been dropped against a California woman who delivered a stillborn baby with toxic levels of methamphetamine in its system.
In November 2019, a 25-year-old woman in central California woman was arrested and charged with murder after delivering a stillborn child with methamphetamine in its system. According to a news release from the Hanford Police Department, an autopsy from the Kings County Coroner’s Office revealed toxic levels of methamphetamine in the stillborn baby. Chelsea Becker,26, “further admitted to law enforcement she used methamphetamine while she was most recently pregnant as late as three days prior to giving birth to the stillborn fetus,” the department noted. Becker was arrested several weeks after the stillbirth on a felony charge of first-degree murder. She was booked into the Kings County Jail with a bail set at $5 million, which was later reduced to $2 million. Unable to make the $2 million bail, Becker remained behind bars until this March. Becker was finally released when Kings County Superior Court Judge Robert Shane Burns granted her attorneys’ request to relocate her to a drug treatment center pending trial. Civil rights groups and reproductive rights activists have rallied behind Becker, claiming she needed treatment, not prison time. There is no evidence that drug use results in stillbirths, advocates claimed.
