Another front opens in the abortion wars.
An Alabama prosecutor is taking advantage of a new law to arrest mothers found to be using drugs while pregnant. “In my jurisdiction, a baby being born dead because of drug abuse is a huge deal,” district attorney, Greg L. Gambril told The New York Times.
Mr. Gambril makes little distinction between fetus and child. He said his duty was to protect both — though the Alabama law he uses makes no reference to unborn children, and was primarily intended to protect youngsters from exposure to methamphetamine laboratories.
In the last 18 months, Gambril has charged eight women in the 37,000-person county with endangering their unborn babies through drug use, "a tally," The Times says, "without any recent parallel that women’s advocates have been able to find."
The article emphasizes the county's rural, Southern culture. It says Maryland threw out two similar cases, while New Mexico's Supreme Court ruled a woman couldn't be charged with child abuse for using drugs while pregnant because the fetus was not a child.
While one local attorney called the charges “an overreaching,” The Times says, "others bring up the powerful, unspoken community sanction against the combination of drugs and pregnant women." Hopefully southern Alabama isn't the only place in America where people find drug abuse by pregnant women an especially troublesome problem.
But, The Times seems to say, what else is there to do in southern Alabama?
Covington County is an isolated rural terrain where drugs are a recreational outlet in the absence of others, where the police found nearly 200 methamphetamine laboratories in the first years of the decade, and where they made more arrests for abusing the drug than anywhere else in the state.
All of the women quoted by The Times had several other charges.
It's unfortunate that a public discussion over something as serious as drug abuse by pregnant women has to be laced with the abortion debate. On this issue, at least, isn't there enough common ground on which pro-life and pro-choice advocates can agree?
Posted by Rob Moll on March 15, 2008 8:19PM
Comments
This is a very serious issue - doing drugs while pregnant. This shows the irresponsibilty of young mothers today, or a lack of communicating useful information to these mothers. My wife works with young girls like this and there are many who come to her clinic and admit to using drugs while pregnant. Irregardless of what liberal judges in liberal courts rule - for us as people of faith, a baby is a baby the minute it is formed in the mother's womb. God told the prophet, "I knew you before you were formed in the womb." This nation is going to pay a great price for what the liberal courts are ruling in these cases. We must truly rethink this whole issue. I applaud the Alabama prosecutor for his efforts. Perhaps this will, if nothing else, help these young mothers to realize the import of what they are doing. These "babies" don't ask to be conceived, but they should have a right to be born without going through withdrawal - if you have never seen this - it is terrible. Too bad the rest of these liberal judges couldn't get a dose of what Alabama is doing. Go for it Greg, keep up the good work.
Posted by: Eugene Edwards at March 17, 2008
When a prosecutor take a position like discribed in your article, it could be very politically popular. Such might be the case in the subject area of Alabama. "Tough on crime" philosophies are very popular with most of my Evangilical friends. Perhaps the solution is to just "stone her."
An elderly couple I know had a such a view until a couple years ago, when the party charge with the crimes wasn't just some sinner, but rather it was their grandchild. It was no longer philisophical. In addition, they were confronted with the fact that prosecution is about convictions, as much as guilt or innocense.
My wife and I have provided almost 5000 child days of foster parenting to 6 children. Everyone of them comes from a drug and/or alcohol home. How many of the people who race to protect the unborn are there to protect the born? No one whats the kids we have taken. It is easy to talk about protecting the unborn, than to deal with the born on a daily basis.
Whenever I focus on anyother's sins, I am saved from focusing on myself. Where I live it cost around $40,000 per year to "lock'em up." The interest is in "making them pay" rather than reducing the causes of the problem.
Locally, meth labs have almost disapeared. Why? Because it is cheaper to import from Mexico. "What's economics got to do with it?"
Posted by: Wes H at March 17, 2008
If doing the drugs is illegal anyway, shouldn't the women be charged pregnant or not? I am not sure it's such a good idea to put additional penalties just because the women are pregnant. Take away the kids? Yes. Charge them just as any other person would be charged? Of course, and get them into rehab. I worry that if you say, you can add extra charges just because the woman is pregant, there would be a precedent to also arrest women who do legal things that *might* endanger their unborn children. (drinking, smoking, drinking coffee, taking an aspirin, etc.)
Posted by: Chris at March 18, 2008
This problem is much more common than people realize. I did a hospital chaplain internship a couple of years ago, in the labor and delivery unit of a community hospital. In the three months I was there, we lost 12 babies in utero (technically called a "fetal demise") - and at least half of those were drug-related. Two were almost full term. It was so hard to try to provide grief counseling for women who seemed to have no concept of the consequences of their actions. The innocent loss of life because, in some cases it seemed, the mothers could care less. I have no idea how to solve this problem, but I can certainly attest that it's a HUGE, though hidden, problem.
Posted by: Carolyn at March 19, 2008
I believe Gods Word that a baby is a baby from the moment of conception. It may take some prosecutions to bring this fact into the public consciousness. Drugs are a big problem here in the UK, and I too know girls giving birth to little heroin addicted babies, and girls who have had their babies taken away at birth.
However, being self righteous and judgemental is not right either. We ought to be there to show support for these Mothers to see the pregnacy through, and to provide loving homes for those babies whose biological parents won't or can't look after them.
Posted by: Linda at March 22, 2008
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