Punishment of Pregnant Women
For the past 30 years, as a concerted campaign to restrict abortion rights has captured public attention, an insidious and concomitant, but less widely recognized effort, has been underway to deny pregnant women their rights to bodily integrity and their humanity. By combining claims of fetal rights with the war on drugs, new laws that punish pregnant women and families are being enacted and enforced. There is consensus in the medical community that addiction is a public health issue and that treating drug use during pregnancy as a crime undermines the health of both women and children. Yet fetal rights advocates in some states have convinced police, prosecutors, judges that addiction itself may be punished if the addict or drug user is a pregnant woman and that a pregnant woman’s addiction should be treated as a form of civil child abuse. These cases and statutes are having a devastating effect on women’s reproductive and human rights as well as public health, drug policy reform efforts, family life, and efforts for racial equality.
In the name of fetal rights and under the guise of the war on drugs, hundreds of women have been arrested for being pregnant and continuing to term in spite of a drug or alcohol problem. One state, South Carolina, by judicial fiat has declared that viable fetuses are legal persons and that pregnant women who use illegal drugs or engage in any other behavior that jeopardizes the fetus can be prosecuted as a child abusers or murders. Indeed, the arrest of pregnant women is not limited to those using illegal drugs. In Utah, a woman was charged with murder based on the claim that she caused a stillbirth by refusing to have a c-section earlier in her pregnancy. These arrests are taking place in spite of the lack of authorizing legislation and in spite of overwhelming opposition from medical, public health and child welfare organizations.
While hundreds of women have been arrested, there thousands more who have been subjected to punitive and counterproductive child welfare interventions that treat what women do or experience during pregnancy as evidence of civil child neglect or abuse. In increasing number of state are using a single unconfirmed positive drug test on new mothers or babies as a basis for involving child welfare authorities and in some cases removing the newborn from family custody. Women who have tested positive for drugs administered during labor, women in federally approved methadone treatment programs and women whose drug use in no way compromises their parenting ability have had their children taken from them.
These punitive responses are taking place in a context in which women often have little or no access to the appropriate family drug treatment. The National Association for Addiction Professionals begins one of its briefing papers by stating: “Women are second-class citizens when it come to treatment for drug addiction and alcoholism.” Not only are women denied access to this health care, they are then punished for having a disease for which they cannot get treatment.
This section contains articles, research and links on a number of areas adressing these and related forms of punishment and control of pregnant women. The section on Pregnancy and Drug Use: The Facts includes information from leading medical researchers debunking many of the destructive myths that help fuel and justify the punitive approaches. The subsection on Court-Ordered Interventions under Pregnancy, Childbirth and Parenting addresses other kinds of assaults on pregnant women and families that are closely related.
New Mexico Supreme Court to Hear Oral Arguments in Case Involving Prosecution of Woman Struggling with Addiction During Pregnancy
Leading Physicians, Scientific Researchers, and Medical, Public Health, and Child Welfare Organizations Oppose Treating Pregnant Women Who Give Birth in Spite of a Drug Problem as Felony Child Abusers
Prosecuting mothers won't protect our children
The Ohio Middletown Journal
By Lynn T. Singer and Tiloma Jayasinghe
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Three-year-old Marcus Fiesel's life was cut tragically short when he was murdered, allegedly, by his foster parents. He was placed in foster care by Butler County. Now some Ohio officials are seeking to distract attention from how the foster care system failed by focusing attention instead on drug- and alcohol-using pregnant women. These officials want to make it a felony offense for a woman to continue her pregnancy to term in spite of a drug or alcohol problem. It would be criminal for a woman to give birth to a child who tests positive for drugs or who evidences developmental delays as a result of alcohol use.
NAPW Commentary Featured in Womens eNews
This week, Womens eNews features a commentary, Jailing Pregnant Women Raises Health Risks by NAPW legal intern/NYU law student Julie Ehrlich and Lynn Paltrow.
S.C.: LEADING THE NATION IN THE PROSECUTION OF PREGNANT WOMEN
SOUTH CAROLINA: LEADING THE NATION IN THE PROSECUTION AND PUNISHMENT OF PREGNANT WOMEN
RECENT ARRESTS AND CONVICTIONS
• July 2006, Gaffney: Hannah Lauren Jolly, 20 was charged with “unlawful child neglect” based on the claim that her newborn baby tested positive for marijuana and cocaine. Jolly relinquished her newborn to nurses at a hospital and was therefore protected from prosecution for abandonment by Daniel’s Law, also known as the Abandoned Babies Act. Nevertheless, after the child tested positive for drugs, police tracked Ms. Jolly down and arrested her.
• March 2006, Clearwater: Betty L. Staley, 28, was charged with “unlawful neglect” after her daughter allegedly tested positive for cocaine at birth.
• February 2006, Aiken: Carolyn Michelle Wright, 27, was charged with “unlawful neglect” based on the claim that she tested positive for cocaine use when she went to a hospital.
• January 2006, Easley: Jennifer Lee Arrowood, 38, was arrested for “homicide by child abuse” after suffering a placental abruption and giving birth to a stillborn son. The state claimed that Ms. Arrowood’s drug use was the cause of this pregnancy loss. Charges were reduced to unlawful neglect of a child. Ms. Arrowood was convicted January 23, 2006, and received a 10-year prison sentence.
Idaho's Senate Attacks Pregnant Women
Wyndi Anderson of National Advocates for Pregnant Women told me via email that this kind of law isn't exactly a new idea: "[Similar bills have] been shot down in other states because in the end it is bad for the very infants they say they want to help. If we really want to provide an opportunity for women to have healthy pregnancies then we need to think about ways we can support women and their families. These type of measures are almost always someone trying to further their career because no one who understands addiction and cares about children and women would dare to pass such a law."
Pregnant Women and their Babies: Drug War Casualties?
Pregnant Drug Users: Scapegoats of the Reagan/Bush and Clinton Era Economics
By: Sheigla Murphy and Paloma Sales
INTRODUCTION
In this paper we present analyses of two National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded studies entitled, "An Ethnographic Study of Pregnancy and Drug Use" (Rosenbaum and Murphy 1991-94) and "An Ethnography of Victimization, Pregnancy and Drug Use," (Murphy 1995-98). Our goal is to explicate the ways in which pregnant drug users in the San Francisco Bay Area experienced, coped with and protected themselves from increasing stigmatization, abuse and punishment while enduring a period of fiscal retrenchment of government assistance programs.
Governmental Response to Pregnant Women Who Use Alcohol or Other Drugs
This Overview surveys civil and criminal laws directly addressing pregnant women's use of alcohol and other drugs. It reveals a patchwork of policies, some oriented toward treatment, some purportedly focused on child protection, some frankly punitive.
Punishment and Prejudice: Judging Drug-Using Pregnant Women
Throughout the late 1980's and still today, "crack moms" and "crack babies" are the subject of vigorous public debate. Much of this public discussion has been governed by speculation and medical misinformation reported as fact in both medical journals and in the popular press and has been extremely judgmental and punitive in many instances.