Adventist Health Stillborn Reporting Policy Leads to Woman's Arrest (Health News Headlines)

Adventist Health Stillborn Reporting Policy Leads to Woman's Arrest. On January 3, Adora Perez, 29, gave birth to a stillborn child at the Adventist Health Hanford hospital. According to Melinda Morales, a spokesperson for Adventist Health in the Central Valley, the health system’s policy requires that its birth center staff notify the county coroner’s office of any stillbirth after 20 weeks. During evaluation by the attending physician and medical staff, the baby tested positive for methamphetamines. Two hours after the delivery, medical staff called the coroner according to policy, and also placed a call to Child Protective Services. CPS notified the police, leading to a search of Perez’ home. After police found evidence of methamphetamine use, they arrested Perez and booked her on suspicion of second-degree murder. From Fresno Bee, “This woman delivered a stillborn baby. Now she’s in jail and accused of murder.”


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://spectrummagazine.org/article/2018/01/23/adventist-health-stillborn-reporting-policy-leads-womans-arrest-health-news-headl

Drugs are such a huge problem, and meth can lead to huge developmental difficulties or even death of an infant as we see here. A very sad story. My heart goes out to the family who lost a baby and the mother who will have to live with this the rest of her life. I hope and pray she gets the treatment she needs. The reporting of a fetal death after 20 weeks is a state law in California (HSC 10175), not a hospital policy. That’s why CPS and law enforcement got involved and arrested the mother on suspicion of murder.

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I would like all students be tested for drugs every 3 months or as often as necessary to determine use.

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