Whats Wrong With Making It a Crime to be Pregnant and to Have a Drug Problem?
Laws that make it a crime to be pregnant and addicted undermine women’s and children’s health and seriously threaten women’s reproductive rights. Moreover, they are based on a number of unsubstantiated and costly myths. Myth #1: All Drug-Exposed Children Are Seriously Damaged At Birth. Some newborns exposed prenatally to some substances do suffer adverse short or long-term consequences. These infants include those whose mothers lacked access to quality prenatal care and adequate nutrition, smoked or drank while pregnant, or used fertility-enhancing medications that cause multiple births associated with prematurity and other life-threatening hazards. However, sensational, inaccurate, and misleading news reports, especially about crack/cocaine, have convinced many people of the necessity of punitive responses to the problem of drug-exposed children. Today, dozens of carefully constructed studies establish that the impact of cocaine on newborns has been greatly exaggerated and that other
