Oklahoman Amanda Aguilar was taken into custody by police subsequent to utilizing weed while pregnant. However Aguilar had a MMJ license, investigators contemplated that her expected child didn’t. As a mother of five she was charged with child neglect, a felony level crime.
Presently, the state’s most top criminal court says examiners had no premise to do that.
The decision ought to be uplifting news for ladies who use maryjane to assist with morning affliction and other pregnancy illnesses. Yet, the feelings for this situation clarify that some Oklahoma judges might want to see pregnant cannabis patients condemned.
“The baby has no medical marijuana license,” composed Judge Gary L. Lumpkin in a disagreeing statement.
Indeed, even Adjudicator Scott Rowland, who composed the greater part’s viewpoint, focused on that the court doesn’t “condone marijuana use by an expectant mother” and encouraged Oklahoma administrators “to consider an addition to the law making clear when, if ever, the licensed use of marijuana may constitute child neglect.”
Aguilar isn’t a lone Oklahoma mother who has been charged for presenting a baby to maryjane that she was utilizing lawfully. As per the charitable Pregnancy Equity, “at least eight women have been charged under this theory since 2019.”
Another Oklahoma mother, Brittany Gunsolus, is one such lady. After her child was positive for cannabis upon entering the world, she — like Aguilar — was accused of crime kid neglect, in spite of the way that she additionally had a clinical pot license and that child welfare checked her out and considered her fit.
Gunsolus’ legal counselors contended that utilizing medical cannabis while pregnant ought to be dealt with very much like taking some other doctor prescribed drug during pregnancy. In any case, Comanche Province examiners clearly clashed. “At a court hearing in Comanche County in August [2023], a prosecutor argued Gunsolus broke the law because her unborn child did not have its own, separate state license to use medical marijuana,” The Frontier stated.
With the assistance of Pregnancy Justice, Gunsolus asked the Oklahoma Highest Court to hear her case and decide that pregnant weed patients with a medical cannabis permit can’t be criminally charged. The Court refused the case.
Aguilar’s case got its day in court thanks to Kay Area prosecutor.
Subsequent to being accused of child neglect, Aguilar submitted a motion to deny the case for lack of proof, contending that utilizing clinical weed while pregnant isn’t unlawful. “There are countless mothers who will take these charges since they’re unnerved,” Aguilar told The Frontier.
A judge allowed Aguilar’s motion and it was dismissed. However, Kay county D.A. Brian Hermanson went ahead, engaging Oklahoma’s top criminal court.
On July 18, the Oklahoma Criminal Court of Appeals decided against the D.A.
“For us to find that Aguilar’s marijuana use, fully authorized by her medical marijuana card, became illegal due to her pregnancy, would require us to rewrite the statutes in a way we simply do not think is appropriate for courts to do,” Rowland wrote in the court’s perspective, confirming the lower court’s giving of Aguilar’s movement to subdue.
Oklahoma regulation states for its meaning of child neglect as “the failure or omission to protect a child from exposure to…the use, possession, sale, or manufacture of illegal drugs.” In Aguilar’s charging records, police say she was at legitimate fault for presenting a youngster to “controlled dangerous substances.”
“Thus, the charging document accuses Aguilar of a crime which does not exist,” Rowland composes. He brings up that controlled dangerous substances and unlawful drugs are not interchangeable terms, since many controlled substances are lawful to have and use with a doctor’s aprroval/prescription. For this situation, Aguilar had a MMJ license, and that implies that she was not having or utilizing it illicitly.
In a contradicting assessment, Lumpkin contended that Aguilar’s weed use ought to have been unlawful on the grounds that “only [she] has a permit to use it, not her baby.” In this way, “the baby’s exposure to [Aguilar’s] use and possession of marijuana, a Schedule I drug, is illegal.”
Judge David B. Lewis takes up a comparative subject in his opposition, composing that “a medical marijuana license is certainly not a legal authorization to share, transfer, or distribute marijuana to others who have no license, especially those for whom its use or possession is unauthorized by law.” In addition, “who could really doubt that a licensed marijuana consumer would face legal consequences for willfully sharing, distributing, or permitting the unlicensed ingestion of marijuana by children for whose welfare they are responsible?”
Rowland rejects these statements. By this rationale, it would be “unlawful for any expectant mother to ever be prescribed any controlled dangerous substance by any doctor,” he brings up.
In any case, the many don’t appear to be persuaded that it ought to be lawful for pregnant ladies to utilize cannabis with a MMJ license. “We understand [Lumpkin’s] obvious desire to discourage marijuana use by pregnant women,” Rowland states at a certain point, asking the law makers “to address the problem.”
What’s more, both the majority and disagreeing sentiments are saturated with the language of fetal personhood, an idea that sees the unborn as an individual with lawful freedoms separate from the mother.
Fetal personhood is most frequently used as a support for restricting abortion. Yet, it likewise can be utilized to legitimize a wide range of limitations on pregnant ladies or criminal punishments for the people who do whatever that the state expresses isn’t in an embryo’s or fetus’ wellbeing. This allows for grounds for anything from charges against ladies who take drugs while pregnant (something Rowland for the most part supports, composing that “an expectant mother who exposes her unborn child to illegal methamphetamine could be convicted of child neglect”) to discipling a pregnant person for getting injured or shot since she put herself in damages’ manner.
It likewise prepares to all the more intently checking every pregnant lady and managing an expansive scope of their exercises.
The people who want to condemn all pregnant MMJ patients are creating that dangerous slippery slope, as well as neglecting to act to the best interest of the fetuses. Apprehension about charges by and large won’t stop somebody who’s dependent on drugs from utilizing, yet it could prevent them from looking for substance misuse treatment, getting legitimate pre-birth care, or cusing a hospital for delivery — things that could intensify any impacts of pre-birth drug use.
As with countless issues concerning ladies’ bodies, choices about cannabis use during pregnancy are best surrendered to pregnant ladies and their primary care physicians.
Hopefully Oklahoma administrators concur.