California Did Not Pass a Law That Allows Mothers To Kill Their NewbornBabies

Misbar has investigated the claim and found it to be misleading. California did not introduce any new bill that allows mothers to kill their newborn babies. 

Our team did not find any reliable sources reporting on such a California bill legalizing infanticide.

Websites Misrepresented a California Reproductive Health Bill

Tracking the claim, we found that the Miami Standard website posted it on March 24, 2022, purporting that California lawmakers were working on an “infanticide bill.”

According to the article, “Under California AB 2223, a mother will be shielded from civil and criminal charges for any actions or omissions related to her pregnancy.” 

The article also mentioned that the bill included “perinatal death,” defined as “ the death of a newborn up to seven days or more.”

Description: The Miami Standard website posted the claim.

Did California Legalize Infanticide?

The bill the article referred to is Assembly Bill 2223, which is a bill that intends to ensure that parents are not investigated or prosecuted after ending a pregnancy or if they lost their baby because of a pregnancy-related cause.

The bill aims to end the requirement of investigating deaths related to self-induced or criminal abortions and prevent using a coroner’s statement to pursue a criminal case. It also would prohibit a person from being subject to “civil or criminal liability, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome or including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.”

According to the California Legislative Information platform, “The bill would clarify that an abortion is unauthorized if performed by a person other than the pregnant person and either the person performing the abortion is not a health care provider, that is authorized to perform an abortion or the fetus is viable.”

Assembly Bill 2223 also did not define what it meant by perinatal death that the Miami Standard website considered a fatality up to seven days after birth. However, this bill seeks to protect parents from legal prosecution if their baby’s death occurred because of pregnancy-related issues and does not legalize infanticide.