Becerra, Bay Area DAs join vow not to charge if Roe v. Wade ends
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and a trio of Bay Area district attorneys are among more than 60 prosecutors nationwide vowing not to prosecute women who obtain abortions if Roe v. Wade is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The prosecutors’ promise was issued in a joint statement released Wednesday by the coalition Fair and Just Prosecution.
“What brings us together is our view that as prosecutors we should not and will not criminalize health care decisions such as these,” the statement read in part. “And we believe it is our obligation as elected prosecutors charged with protecting the health and safety of all members of our community to make our views clear.”
Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton, San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin and Santa Clara County DA Jeff Rosen were among the 62 prosecutors and attorneys general from 28 states and the District of Columbia to sign onto the letter.
Becerra, posting Wednesday on Twitter, said his office “will continue to fight against laws that harm women’s health and restrict their rights. But it’s not enough to hold the line. We must push forward and fight for reproductive freedom as well.”
“This is a really important time, particularly where we are. There is a history that has established legal precedent in the U.S., and as elected prosecutors we have a tremendous amount of discretion,” Becton said in a Wednesday interview. “Women have a right to decisions about their own medical care. I’m a prosecutor, a woman, a mother. It is extremely important. Every woman has a fundamental right to privacy — including whether to terminate their pregnancy.”
The landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling, long a target of conservatives, is again in the spotlight this week as Senate confirmation hearings of conservative Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett are underway.
Democratic lawmakers and women’s choice advocates fear Barrett’s confirmation — a sixth conservative on the nation’s highest court to fill the seat previously held by late associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg — will signal the end of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the U.S. and has been the law of the land for nearly a half-century.
Ginsberg died Sept. 18 at age 87.
“In this time of crisis — when so many in our community are grappling with the challenges of a global pandemic, economic downturn and tremendous uncertainty — elected prosecutors have the opportunity to lead and to offer peace of mind to women and health care professionals who might otherwise be placed in the untenable position of choosing between the exercise of personal health care choices and the threat of criminal prosecution,” said Miriam Krinsky, Fair and Just Prosecution executive director, in announcing the joint statement.
Prosecutors in the statement warn against the steady erosion of abortion rights nationwide and vaguely written laws that leave open the possibility of criminal prosecution and prison sentences “for anyone involved in an abortion - from the patient receiving the abortion to the physician performing the procedure to the receptionist at a clinic to the person who drove the patient to the facility.”
They say laws targeting pregnant victims of rape or incest, molestation or human trafficking only serve to revictimize women while ignoring the child molester or rapist. Calling on DAs to prosecute women seeking abortions and the doctors who perform them, they said, will erode public trust and divert resources from addressing and preventing serious crimes.
“Laws that revictimize and retraumatize victims are unconscionable,” the statement read, adding that prosecutors would be “undermined by the enforcement of laws which harm and force unnecessarily difficult and traumatizing decisions on many in our community. It is imperative that we use our discretion to decline to prosecute personal health care choices criminalized under such laws.”
The prosecutors cite laws recently enacted in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee, among other states, that place strict limits on when a woman can decide to terminate her pregnancy even in the case of rape or incest, or the health of the mother. Becton said she is troubled by the trend.
“As prosecutors, we are committed to the safety and well-being of everyone in this country. There seems to be an ongoing enactment of laws and reproductive rights will continue to be under assault. That chipping away of rights causes alarm,” Becton said. “That has to be troubling to all of us.”
This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 12:05 PM.
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