By Brianna Bailey, Photograph: Brianna Bailey/The Frontier, The Marshall Project, September 13, 2022
Two district attorneys have targeted
mothers with child neglect felonies.
NEWKIRK, OKLA. — Early in her pregnancy, Amanda Aguilar struggled with severe nausea that sometimes made it hard to eat.
A doctor had previously approved a medical marijuana license for her, so she used pot to ease her morning sickness.
Aguilar, 33, said she stopped using marijuana after her third month of pregnancy and tested negative for the drug after her healthy son was born in October 2020. But the hospital found traces of marijuana in her baby’s stool.
Two months later, the district attorney in Aguilar’s mostly rural county near the Kansas border charged her with child neglect, a felony. She has decided to fight the charge, and recently declined to comment on the advice of her public defender.
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