Taking Narcotics During Pregnancy , Will It Be in Baby System
When the Tennessee General Assembly voted last week to criminally prosecute women who employ illegal narcotics during pregnancy, it ignored, among other things, the major medical community'southward longstanding warnings about the negative and counterproductive furnishings of such punitive measures.
The bill, sent to Gov. Bill Haslam for consideration April 16, allows for felony assail charges against a woman "if her child is born fond to or harmed by the narcotic drug, and the habit or impairment is a event of her illegal use of a narcotic drug taken while meaning." (A conviction can get you 15 years in prison.)
A woman may be protected from prosecution, the neb says, if she "actively enrolled in an addiction recovery program before the child is born, remained in the programme later delivery, and successfully completed the program, regardless of whether the child was built-in addicted to or harmed past the narcotic drug."
But the threat of prosecution is the very affair that prevents women with substance employ disorders from seeking assist, medical professionals say — and not all women will have equal access to care and treatment options.
Hither'due south a sampling of their many cautionary statements over the years:
The American Society of Addiction Medicine: "Incarceration of pregnant women as a ways of preventing fetal exposure to alcohol or other drug use may compromise both maternal and fetal health and inhibit the meaning woman's opportunity to receive effective treatments to accost her long-term recovery from her substance-related disorder."
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists: "Seeking obstetric–gynecologic care should not expose a woman to criminal or civil penalties, such every bit incarceration, involuntary commitment, loss of custody of her children, or loss of housing. These approaches care for addiction as a moral failing. Addiction is a chronic, relapsing biological and behavioral disorder with genetic components. The disease of substance addiction is subject to medical and behavioral management in the same way as hypertension and diabetes."
The American Psychiatric Association: "APA urges that societal resources be directed not to punitive actions but to adequate preventive and treatment services for these women and children. APA strongly advocates the evolution and funding of the necessary inpatient, outpatient, and residential programs for mothers with their children. Services should accost and foster the parental functions, also as the intendance of individual mother and child."
Michele Bratcher Goodwin, Everett Fraser Professor in Constabulary at the University of Minnesota Law School, has made a close study of such policing efforts, especially their touch on drug-addicted poor women of colour.
Tennessee's proposed law, she said in an interview this week, "is like throwing a lit match in a very dry and hot identify, and the kerosene is already in that location." Here's a summary of her many issues with this and other such laws.
They criminalize drug dependency, which is an illness:
Taking away women's liberties for something that we know is a medical status, such as drug dependency, is criminalizing drug dependency. The U.Southward. Supreme Court said decades ago that criminalizing drug dependency is like criminalizing someone for having the flu.
They target women of color:
For decades, across the Usa, we have been criminalizing poor women of color for drug employ during pregnancy. And there are significant disparities. For example, we know that physicians are 10 times more than likely to report an African American woman for her illicit drug use during pregnancy than a white adult female.
And … because they're poor, they usually don't take access to adept criminal defence force attorneys. And even the criminal defense attorneys who are sympathetic are oftentimes not well-versed in cases such as this.
So those who end up in situations where they are prosecuted under laws for posing some sort of harm to their fetuses usually stop up accepting some plea bargain. Their cases rarely end up fully adjudicated in front of a jury because they're coerced and pressed into taking a plea deal.
Anyone tin see what kind of leverage a prosecutor can apply. For instance, a woman who happens to be less educated and poor is told, "Oh look, we've got this bear witness that your drug utilize killed your infant." Or "Your drug utilize affected your infant in this way." They don't have the resources to mount a skilful defence that would include bringing in witnesses who show, and say, "That'southward non true."
They employ different standards based on class:
Allow's face it: Any woman who happens to be well-to-practice who suffers psychological challenges during her pregnancy tin seek medical treatment through her md and receive prescription medication. And many women do. In fact the empirical evidence suggests that the wealthier a woman is, the more educated [and white] she is … chances are that during her pregnancy, she's taking a prescription medication — often cocktails of prescription medications.
The truth of it is … there's a different level of moral scrutiny practical based on the type of drug that a woman takes during pregnancy. If it'due south prescription medication, nosotros treat that as a morally neutral thing or morally appropriate that the woman receive what nosotros consider to exist that type of care — to help and assistance her during her pregnancy. And withal a woman who is poor, who lacks access to a physician, and who takes essentially the same kind of drug, except that it'due south provided past a dealer on the corner, loses any of that of compassion, any of that moral authority to treat the challenges that she has during her pregnancy, which are no different from the challenges that a woman who happens to be wealthier and more educated has during her pregnancy.
And then there is a very different lens that is applied simply based on class.
They reinforce stereotypes and misinformation:
For example, the "crack-infant" scare was incredibly successful during the 1980s, 1990s, and the first of the 2000s — based on very faulty information that was spread in the media. In fact, last year the New York Times … acknowledged that they and other media outlets got it wrong, that they relied on faulty data and published stories that could not be verified and that we know today happen to be only untrue in terms of crevice causing atmospheric condition that would lead to the babies beingness malformed, with smaller brains, with distended genitalia — all sorts of crazy things that were written about in the 1980s that at present we know are absolutely just not true. Then one of the problems with this, too, is that it helps to reify certain types of stereotypes that are quite problematic.
They corrupt the medico-patient relationship:
Part of what happens is that states seek to use doctors every bit gatekeepers, every bit constabulary enforcement. And this is bad because the public understands their relationship with their doctors to be based on something that involves a fiduciary relationship, which suggests that information technology's a very special kind of relationship, where the physician owes his or her loyalty to his or her patient. The doctor must identify all other interests to the side because the primary interest has to be serving the needs of the patient. This also includes preserving the confidentiality of the communications between the doctor and the patient.
Now when constabulary enforcement gets involved in that, it completely distorts this relationship that we come to — expecting care, expecting trust, and expecting that we are the master beneficiaries of the medico's piece of work. That goes out the window in these cases where the state expects the doctors to become their enforcers, to go their snitches. Information technology reprioritizes the medical human relationship. So the doctor might otherwise say, "What I need you to do is to go into this rehab plan. So here'southward a course of action that I recommend for yous."
Instead, when law enforcement places this kind of onus and burden on doctors, then law enforcement … expects for doctors to only call the prosecutor'southward office and call constabulary. That completely shortchanges the md'south endeavour to effort to get advisable medical services to the patient.
And ane final affair that I remember is actually problematic in terms of the physician-patient relationship is that our criminal justice system requires that when a person is existence sought by the country for breaching the police in some way, the state has to inform that person that what that person says, what that person does, may in fact incriminate that person. They take to inform the person that this is a criminal matter and that the person has the right not to respond and that the person also has the right to engage an attorney.
Doctors do not provide that information, merely this is the gateway to prosecution. Women are being arrested right later on seeing their physicians and disclosing information that they believe will be held in confidence. Information technology's a complete a breach of our constitutional norms in the criminal justice organization.
They break up families, and funnel the children of prisoners into the criminal justice system:
Many of these women are already moms, they're chief caregivers … [and] children finish upward in the criminal justice organisation pipeline because they end up in foster care, and foster care is a criminal justice pipeline. There are very provocative studies beingness washed at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin that detail these horrific outcomes for children who are in foster intendance who age out [turn eighteen] and … have parents who are in prison. They have higher incidence of dropping out and higher incidence of beingness involved in the criminal justice system. For the girls, over 70 per centum end up significant themselves by the time they age out.
They allow the state to try to accomplish a public good in an unconstitutional manner:
No one wants to meet a woman using drugs during pregnancy, and ideally we want all babies to be born healthy. But we cannot discriminate betwixt classes of pregnant women, and target simply poor pregnant women. Nor is it permissible for the state to try to attain a good goal in an unconstitutional way. Hundreds of years of constitutional law tells the states that even when the country thinks that it'due south going to be something good, it can't interruption the law to do it. It can't violate someone's constitutional right in club to try to achieve a good, including a public-health good with fetuses.
Source: https://www.minnpost.com/mental-health-addiction/2014/04/criminalizing-pregnant-women-who-use-illegal-drugs-throwing-lit-matc/
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