Woman who used meth before stillbirth going to treatment center

A central California woman charged with murder after delivering a stillborn baby who tested positive for methamphetamine will be released to a drug treatment center as her lawyers argue that the state’s homicide law does not apply to pregnant women, a position backed by California’s attorney general.

Chelsea Becker, 26, has been in a Kings County jail since her arrest in November 2019, unable to raise $2 million bail. Kings County Superior Court Judge Robert Shane Burns on Tuesday granted her attorneys’ request to release her to an out-of-county residential treatment center pending trial. She has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say the case is about stopping a woman who has repeatedly abused narcotics while pregnant, resulting in two other babies who tested positive for meth at birth. The DA’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.

The case has outraged advocates of pregnant women who say overzealous prosecutors are trying to punish a woman who needs treatment, and not prison time, and they hope the charges will soon be thrown out. There is no evidence that drug use results in stillbirths, they say, and allowing the charges would have a chilling effect: preventing women from seeking needed prenatal care.

“We are deeply saddened, horrified that this case has been continuing for 15 months, keeping someone incarcerated because she lost a pregnancy, which thousands of women do every year,” said Lynn Paltrow, executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, which is providing legal support for Becker.

California’s top prosecutor, Xavier Becerra, who is being considered for secretary of health and human services in the Biden administration, sent a friend of the court brief stating that the law was never meant to apply to pregnant women and urging the charges be dropped. The judge in this case has declined to do so.

In September 2019, Becker gave birth to a stillborn child she had named Zachariah Joseph Campos. The coroner’s report listed toxic levels of meth as the cause of death. But one of Becker’s attorneys, Dan Arshack, said the pathologist never reviewed her medical record, which included three infections that could have caused the stillbirth.

Becker had delivered three live children and had no reason to believe that meth use would cause a stillbirth, Arshack said. He declined to make Becker available for an interview.