Medical Discount Blog

The New York Times on Saturday examined the “unusual split” of prosecutions of woman (try women’s health) who used drugs during their pregnancies in Covington County, Alabama. According to the Times, at minutest eight women be in possession of been prosecuted for using drugs while pregnant during the last 18 months in the county, that has a population of about 37,000. According to the Times, the “tally” is “without in any degree recent correspondent that women’s advocates have been able to find.” Once they are arrested, the women usually are sent to county jails, state prisons or drug rehabilitation centers.

Although similar cases have come up in Maryland and New Mexico with “limited success,” Alabama is “pursuing these cases with special vigor,” the Times reports. According to the Times, the “prosecutorial crusade” is the result of a “cultural clash” between “casual drug use and a local district attorney unsettled that children or fetuses might be pretending by it.” Unlike women in other jurisdictions, women in Covington County are not appealing their convictions, and attorneys and physicians “talk about these cases reluctantly, if at all,” the Times reports. Covington County District Attorney Greg Gambril acknowledges the number of cases puts him at the “forefront,” at least among Alabama prosecutors. Gambril said his duty is to protect both fetuses and infants through a greatness law that, according to the Times, does not mention fetuses and was primarily intended to protect not old children from exposure to methamphetamine laboratories.

“In my jurisdiction, a baby being born dead because of drug abuse is a huge deal,” Gambril said, adding, “When drugs are introduced in the womb, the child-to-be is endangered. It is what I call a continuing crime.” The purpose of the law is to guarantee that the child has “a safe environment, a drug-free environment,” he said, adding that no “one is to say whether that environment is inside or outside the womb” and that no judge or other state authority has disagreed. However, some defense attorneys disagree, the Times reports. Rod Sylvester, an attorney representing a woman charged with chemical endangerment, said, “None of those cases should have been brought,” adding, “It’s an overreaching” (Nossiter, New York Times, 3/15).