Pubdate: Mon, 10 Jul 2006
Source: Sun News (Myrtle Beach, SC)
Copyright: 2006 Sun Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/987
Note: apparent 150 word limit on LTEs
Author: Rick Montgomery /McClatchy Newspapers
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)

FETUS-RIGHTS STATUTES HOLD MOTHERS LIABLE

In Arkansas, lawmakers are considering making it a crime for a 
pregnant woman to take a drag off a cigarette.

In Utah, a woman serves 18 months' probation for child endangerment 
after refusing to undergo a Caesarean section to save her twins, one 
of whom died. In South Carolina, Regina McKnight is serving a 12-year 
prison sentence for killing her unborn child by smoking crack, as 
jurors saw it. They needed 15 minutes to deliberate, and the U.S. 
Supreme Court let the verdict stand. And July 1 in Alabama, Brody's 
Law took effect.

It enables prosecutors to level two charges against anyone who 
attacks a pregnant woman and harms her fetus.

Common-sense measures to protect America's most helpless 
citizens-to-be ... or something else?

Abortion-rights groups see this revived wave of "fetal protectionism" 
as a setup to make a fetus a person entitled to constitutional 
rights, contrary to how the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade.

But anti-abortion forces - plus some groups with no stake in the 
fetal-rights debate - say it's a no-brainer that society do whatever 
it can to keep developing babies safe and healthy.

"It's an economic issue and a public-health issue," said state Rep. 
Bob Mathis, an Arkansas Democrat who touts a record backing abortion 
rights and recently floated the idea of a smoking ban during 
pregnancy. A tragedy in Wichita, Kan., last month underscored the 
intractable politics at work. The killing of 14-year-old Chelsea 
Brooks, who was nine months pregnant, became a political cause 
celebre after her family learned that the state could not file 
homicide charges in the death of Alexa - the daughter Chelsea was carrying.

Three people, including her boyfriend, have been charged in Chelsea's 
killing, which authorities say was a murder for hire. Legislative 
inaction this year on a fetal homicide bill kept Kansas from joining 
more than 30 states, including Missouri, where murder laws include 
the unborn as legal victims.

The anti-abortion group Kansans For Life leapt on the controversy, 
accusing Senate moderates and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of "kowtowing" 
to abortion-rights forces by stalling a bill that might have given 
Chelsea's family the justice it sought.

Critics of fetal-rights legislation see a slippery slope in the 
making. In some states, prosecutors have turned such laws against 
mothers whose behavior - typically methamphetamine or crack use - may 
have contributed to a stillbirth or to costly birth defects.

Taken further, could authorities charge pregnant women who reject a 
doctor's advice to take prenatal vitamins and then miscarry? How 
about banning them from playing sports?

And why not punish alcoholic men whose addiction, studies show, could 
affect sperm and produce birth defects?

"What we're seeing is a political trend in which the fetuses are 
coming first, and the rights of women ... are coming last," said Lynn 
M. Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant 
Women. "I think 30 years of anti-abortion rhetoric - 'women killing 
their babies' - has led to a moral vilification that doesn't just 
stick to those who seek to terminate a pregnancy. It's spreading to 
all pregnant women." The Center for Reproductive Rights says six 
states passed fetal homicide bills last year, but others have had 
them on the books for decades. In California, fetal homicide laws 
date to before the legalization of abortion and were successfully 
leveled against Scott Peterson, convicted in the well-publicized 
murder of his wife, Laci, and the son she was carrying, Connor. 
Abortion foes in 2004 cheered President Bush when he signed the 
Unborn Victims of Violence Act - the Laci and Connor Law - providing 
protections for fetuses harmed in the commission of a federal crime. 
Still, many courts have been uneasy about how far fetal rights can 
go. Saying prosecutors overreached, a Texas appeals court last year 
unanimously threw out the convictions of two women charged under the 
state's Prenatal Protection Act for "delivering" cocaine and 
methamphetamine to their babies through the umbilical cord.

"It makes sense that if a woman's right to privacy encompasses 
decisions regarding procreation, such as contraception and abortion, 
it should also include decisions regarding health during pregnancy," 
wrote Chicago lawyer Erin N. Linder in the September issue of 
University of Illinois Law Review. Even Mathis, the Arkansas 
legislator, harbors doubts about the state's ability to enforce an 
anti-smoking law.

"The more I think about it ... you might end up with a fat lip" if 
police approach a smoker who is overweight but not pregnant, he said.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman