Pubdate: Sun, 10 Aug 2003
Source: St. Petersburg Times (FL)
Copyright: 2003 St. Petersburg Times
Contact:  http://www.sptimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/419
Author: Robyn Blumner

MORALISTS' NEW TARGET: PREGNANT WOMEN

When Regina McKnight delivered a stillborn baby in May 1999 after 81/2
months of pregnancy she did what many other mothers who lose a baby
do: She grieved. McKnight named the dead infant Mercedes and asked to
hold it. She wanted photographs and the baby's footprints as a
remembrance and she sought the hospital chaplain.

With an estimated 28,000 women a year suffering a stillborn delivery,
McKnight's situation was hardly unique. Except for one thing: McKnight
was arrested for it.

McKnight, who is poor, black, and has an IQ of 72, was charged with
"homicide by child abuse" for smoking crack cocaine during a pregnancy
that ended in a stillbirth. After two trials in Horry County, S.C.,
McKnight, then 24 years old and a mother of three with no prior
criminal record, was sentenced to 12 years in prison with no chance at
parole.

South Carolina should change its license plate motto from "Smiling
Faces, Beautiful Places" to the far more apt "Antepartum Police
State." The state has tried persistently and for years to make women
criminally liable for their pregnancies. More specifically, Charlie
Condon, the state's former attorney general who is running for U.S.
Senate, has been the architect of the state's attempts to punish
pregnant women. He helped to formulate a program of drug testing
pregnant women at a Charleston public hospital that was struck down by
the U.S. Supreme Court in 2001.

In Condon's program, pregnant women were searched for evidence of drug
use without their consent, with test results turned over to police. At
least one woman was arrested still bleeding from delivery.

This shameful man has made a career of setting unborn children against
the women carrying them. His attempts to get the law to recognize
fetal rights as separate and distinct from the mother are just another
swipe at Roe vs. Wade. It is the same approach used by the Bush
administration in its recent expansion of a children's health
insurance program, which grants health service benefits to the unborn,
not their mothers. Abortion opponents hope that by establishing enough
law that says unborn children have independent legal interests, it
will lead inexorably to pregnant women being stripped of the right to
control their bodies.

Certainly women who want to give their developing baby the best chance
at a healthy start should stay away from all illicit drugs. But the
law shouldn't be allowed to treat women as little more than incubators
- - where the pregnancy police rush in whenever she veers from the
prescribed regimen.

We all know that avoidance of illegal drugs isn't the last word in
healthy pregnancies. There are all sorts of ways women can harm their
developing fetus, including by being exposed to too much stress,
alcohol and caffeine, among a hefty list of other taboos. Cigarette
smoking has been found so dangerous to fetal health that the Campaign
for Tobacco-Free Kids warns that "smoking during pregnancy creates a
more serious risk of spontaneous abortion . . . than using cocaine
during pregnancy."

Any one of these behaviors could be used as the basis for a child
abuse charge in South Carolina, where the law covers any death to a
child under age 11 that results from abuse or neglect. Keep smoking or
stay in a job that you've been warned is too stressful and suffer a
stillbirth, and you could be facing 20 years to life. Here, every
stillbirth is a matter for police investigation, even though most are
caused by conditions and diseases having nothing to do with what a
woman ingests.

South Carolina isn't the only place where scenery-chewing prosecutors
hungry for publicity have tried to punish women for how they conduct
their pregnancies. But only in South Carolina has a state high court
approved the practice by including viable fetuses within the
definition of child abuse laws.

Interestingly, as hyperconcerned as the state seems to be with keeping
pregnant women from drug use, it ranks dead last in the nation in
state funding for drug treatment. McKnight's incarceration will cost
the state about $300,000, hugely more expensive than providing her
with treatment. This suggests the real motive isn't promoting public
health but exacting a puritanical punishment for being unhealthy,
promiscuous and poor.

It is worth noting that no state legislature has so far passed a law
specifically penalizing drug use by pregnant women. Because, when such
bills come up, the medical establishment loudly declares them
counterproductive to fetal and maternal health. Such laws are far more
likely to drive women from prenatal care and hospital deliveries than
to prevent drug use. In fact, 26 public health and medical groups,
including the South Carolina Medical Association and the National
Stillbirth Society, have joined in a brief asking the U.S. Supreme
Court to take up McKnight's appeal.

It is vital that the Supreme Court takes their advice. Nothing short
of the future of women's personal autonomy is at stake.
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