Birthing Drug Babies Now a Crime in Tennessee
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Birthing Drug Babies Now a Crime in Tennessee

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Women just can’t catch a break these days. Tennessee, that bastion of progress, became the first US state to criminalize all drug use during pregnancy back in April. This month, 26-year-old Mallory Loyola of Monroe County became the first to get stamped with these charges when she and her newborn daughter, born July 6, both tested positive for meth.

Not an Incentive to Get Clean or Stop Procreating

Make no mistake, drugs are bad for everyone, especially unborn babies. Nobody’s advocating smoking meth (or anything else) while pregnant or otherwise. And Tennessee is right to be concerned over the steep rise in Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (newborns who plunge into withdrawal once they leave their mothers’ narcoticized wombs) over the past decade. But it’s not clear that creating a brand new way to get arrested will solve the problem. After all, laws don’t keep addicts from using illegal drugs, and they almost certainly won’t keep them from getting pregnant. All this law will accomplish is to punish those who do—and maybe scare them out of seeking the prenatal care they need.

Some Bright Spots

The good news is that Tennessee’s bill, which was signed in April, is much more compassionate than a similar measure that got shot down in the state two years ago. The revamped bill contains an amendment giving arrested women the choice between jail time and voluntary treatment. It also includes a sunset provision requiring reappraisal in 2016, to see if it’s actually making infants healthier. And it operates in conjunction with Tennessee’s Safe Harbor Act, which prevents women who voluntarily seek drug treatment from losing custody of their children.

Protecting the Addicts versus Protecting Their Spawn

Nevertheless, the law has invoked the ire of civil liberties advocates. After Loyola’s arrest, the Tennessee chapter of the ACLU issued a call for plaintiffs in order to challenge the law, which “unconstitutionally singles out new mothers struggling with addiction for criminal assault charges” according to legal director Thomas Castelli.

While Tennessee is the only state explicitly permitting prosecutors to file charges against pregnant women who use drugs, 17 other states consider it a childhood welfare offense. In South Carolina, late pregnancy substance abuse qualifies as criminal child abuse, and in Alabama a law designed to keep children away from from meth labs was recently extended to include fetuses.

And it’s not just Southern states where women may find themselves on the wrong side of the long, hirsute, manly arm of the law. Even in states like Colorado where recreational weed is now legal, women who smoke it while pregnant may find themselves unwittingly ensnared in a web of child endangerment laws.

The Burden of Bearing

Just by being born with the anatomical capacity to incubate life, women are subjected to a slew of punishments no man will ever incur—and I’m not just talking about the horrors of pregnancy itself. Even if you’re one of those women who love the feeling of being pregnant, there’s no denying it would be great if men could share some of the physical and emotional burden of childbearing. Perhaps the most frustrating thing about laws like Tennessee’s is that they tend to be promoted by the same crew that opposes mandatory birth control coverage and funding for Planned Parenthood. Maybe if more low-income women could afford the pill, there would be fewer babies born with a raging dope habit. But hey, they’re lawmakers, not logicians.

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About Author

Erica Larsen AKA Eren Harris blogs at Whitney Calls and Clean Bright Day. Their writing has also been published on Salon, Selfish, Violet Rising and YourTango. They live in Los Angeles with their husband and their enormous cat.