NCJ Number
143489
Date Published
1992
Length
46 pages
Annotation
Few issues provoke more controversy than drug abuse by pregnant women; criminal justice, medical, and social service professionals are divided over how best to respond, and there is intense disagreement over whose rights take precedence, the mother's or the unborn infant's.
Abstract
Much of the opposition to criminal justice intervention stems from a belief that the legal system is not equipped to address the range of problems presented by pregnant addicts. Unfamilarity with options and practices of the criminal justice, family court, and child welfare systems explains certain negative reactions. Other hostility toward prosecution reflects differing views on State sanctions for personal and professional behavior, as well as differing philosophical views on how behavior can be changed. Further, distrust among law enforcement, the medical community, and social service professionals have hindered the search for constructive responses to parental drug use. The following major points of view on the issue of pregnant drug users are identified and discussed: (1) prosecution means incarceration which, in turn, means no treatment; (2) addition is a disease, not a crime; (3) treatment must be voluntary to be effective; (4) fear of prosecution will drive women away from prenatal care; (5) prosecuting drug use during pregnancy opens the door to State controls over all behavior that may harm the fetus; (6) prosecution based on fetal harm creates an adversarial relationship between the mother and child; (7) prosecution for drug use is aimed at poor minority women; (8) prosecution for prenatal substance abuse discriminates against women by ignoring the contribution of males to the problem; (9) no treatment is available for pregnant drug abusers; (10) the most widely used dangerous drug is alcohol, yet alcohol consumption is ignored in antidrug campaigns and encouraged through advertising; and (12) focusing on pregnant addicts ignores the real causes of drug-affected babies (poverty, unemployment, racism, and hopelessness). Any strategy to protect the health and safety of children must be part of a continuum of responses that recognizes the virulent relation between drug abuse and child abuse and neglect and the coresponsibility of fathers and male partners to protect children from harm. Appendixes provide a list of organizations opposing prosecution for maternal drug abuse and descriptions of prosecutor-initiated approaches to the problem. 90 footnotes