Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty has announced that she will stop prosecuting women who use drugs while pregnant.
On July 23, Moriarty outlined her new approach, which includes dismissing about 40 pending cases against pregnant drug users, including cases that have been submitted but not yet charged. Moriarty justified the new policy by declaring that “threatening serious punishment for pregnant people with an addiction doesn’t stop or treat that addiction.
“To the contrary, our current system of charging and punishing pregnant people with substance use problems actually causes tremendous harm,” Moriarty said during a recent press conference. “Our society claims that it values children more than anything else. We therefore must provide a safe space for those struggling to seek treatment while they are pregnant.”
Moriarty also said her office will support petitions for expungement by women who were previously charged.
“Some may say we are condoning drug use while pregnant. Let me address that criticism immediately,” she said. “In our office we look at actual research before making policy decisions. Threats of prosecution mean pregnant people do not get help and they continue using.”
Moriarty’s decision was cheered by DFL-affiliated state legislators. State Sen. Lindsey Port, who is the co-chair of the legislature’s Reproductive Freedom Caucus, said in a statement that she was “pleased that HCAO will no longer be criminalizing addiction during pregnancy, which will increase the likelihood that pregnant people will access the care they need to have safe, healthy pregnancies.
“We must work together at all levels of government to create better health outcomes for Minnesotans, including pregnancy and addiction, and I’m grateful for County Attorney Moriarty’s partnership,” Port said.
University of Minnesota Medical School Professor Dr. Cresta Jones said she has firsthand experience of the challenges that patients face when they worry “about what it means to have a medical condition that is criminalized when they are pregnant.”
“I very much support reducing criminalization of a medical condition in pregnancy, and I know that this allows more patients to feel comfortable coming to prenatal care appointments, which reduces the chance of adverse outcomes for the birthing person and the pregnancy,” she added.
Dropping pending cases is not the only element of Moriarty’s crusade against “mass incarceration.” Moriarty’s office recently hired Andrew Markquart of the Great North Innocence Project to head a new Conviction Integrity Unit, designed to “review cases to rectify wrongful convictions and identify mistakes in past prosecutions.”
Moriarty was also responsible for the unsuccessful and widely criticized prosecution of Trooper Ryan Londregan for the shooting death of Ricky Cobb, something which Londregan’s attorney Chris Madel described as a decision “without probable cause.” It was recently revealed that Moriarty’s office paid an outside team of lawyers over $570,000 for their work on the case.
Evan Poellinger
Evan Poellinger, the Alpha News Summer 2024 Journalism Fellow, is a native Minnesotan with a lifelong passion for history and politics. He previously worked as a journalism intern with the American Spectator and an investigative journalism fellow with the Media Research Center. He is a graduate of College of the Holy Cross with degrees in political science and history.
