POINT-COUNTERPOINT: SHOULD PREGNANT DRUG ADDICTS BE PROSECUTED FOR
'HARMING' THEIR UNBORN CHILDREN?

What'S Next Step? A Police State?

To The Left

By William H. Seewald

The U.S. Supreme Court will decide in a landmark case this year, Ferguson
vs. South Carolina, the constitutionality of a South Carolina law allowing
the arrest of pregnant crack cocaine users who, without their permission,
are tested for drug use when seeking medical care.

This one's troubling for several reasons, not least of all the ongoing
erosion of the Fourth Amendment, our one-time constitutional protection
against unreasonable search and seizure.

The likelihood of actually protecting any children is much less evident in
this law than is the presence of simply one more of the so-called Right to
Life movement's ceaseless efforts to support any legal doctrine that trumps
a woman's constitutional protections in favor of the fetus. So far the
courts have ultimately refused to do that.

There's considerable evidence that alcohol abuse is much more debilitating
than cocaine so far as the fetus is concerned. In the interest of brevity,
we shall sidestep the issue that this is another of the cocaine laws having
a disproportionate, unjust impact on black mothers.

If the objective really is to protect children, criminalizing addiction and
compromising the doctor-patient relationship by demanding that medical
professionals become law-enforcement agents makes the likelihood of
constructive intervention even more remote. It simply ensures that mothers
and their children will do without medical care rather than become ensnared
in the tactics of a police state.

Since the days of the Nixon administration, including particularly
unenlightened policies of the current administration, America has persisted
in criminalizing the medical problem of addiction. We build more prisons
and fill them up with drug abusers, spending a fraction on treatment that
we spend on law enforcement in the "war on drugs."

Right here in Texas, our Gov. Dubya, proving that he is in considerable
personal denial about the realities of addiction, has presided over the
elimination of pilot programs started in the Texas Department of
Corrections - ones proven to work in changing addictive behavior. "Lock em
up!" - that's the ticket if Daddy can't intervene, or a lawyer to get the
record expunged isn't an option.

If we actually ever demonstrate a national commitment to protecting
children and doing something about drug addiction beyond pandering to
stereotypes, we will first of all ensure that every child is a wanted
child. Teaching the realities of parenting and the necessary skills, family
planning, and birth control are the keystones of such a commitment, not
police arrests.

Conservatives are right when they talk about personal responsibility and
demanding cooperation - even a quid pro quo - from recipients of aid. But
those are unrealistic expectations when government perpetuates the
problems, denying birth control to sexually active children, prohibiting
federal funding of abortions for poor women and failing to ensure that all
schools have adequate sex education programs.

Locking up addicts, criminalizing medical problems and hewing to programs
designed to better serve the denial system of parents than the real needs
of children doom us to ever-increasing numbers born into distress and
ever-bigger prison bills. We're just as divorced from reality as the crack
users.

William H. Seewald can be contacted in care of the Amarillo Globe-Times,
P.O. Box 2091, Amarillo, Texas 79166, or letters@amarillonet.com.

Children's Bill Of Rights Might Help

To The Right

By Virgil Van Camp

The war on drugs probably has had more adverse affect on our civil rights
than any other government action in our history. The effort to banish the
very real scourge of substance abuse from our society has filled our
prisons with nonviolent offenders and extended police powers to dangerous
levels.

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon hear a drug case that has troubling
constitutional implications about a broad spectrum of the Bill of Rights.
It involves women arrested in hospitals for drug abuse detected as part of
the admissions and treatment process.

These women had routinely signed consent forms presented to them granting
that test results could be used in this fashion. The fact that many of the
patients were from the bottom end of social and economic classes and many
were minorities has some bearing on the issue.

How often have you signed without reading, under the same conditions, forms
that were handed to you?

So far, there can be little discussion among right-thinking folk about this
practice. It's wrong.

However, like most of life's problems, there are enough shades of gray to
paint a battleship. The case that the Supremes will hear has to do with
pregnant women. There is now a third party, the fetus, who might or might
not be a human being or have rights, depending on the circumstances.

On the one hand, abortion has been declared a right at all stages of
pregnancy. Even partial-birth abortion has been found legal. Yet, when the
fetus takes its first breath, it becomes a human and supposedly is
protected by the law that governs the rest of us, particularly laws
pertaining to child abuse and neglect. The arrests in question also are
justified by South Carolina's laws against child endangerment and
distribution of drugs to a minor.

Society has a real and vital obligation to protect newborns. Babies who are
born addicted have a very poor start in life, mentally and physically. They
almost always will become wards of the foster care system, either because
they are abandoned by their mother or from later neglect. Jail during
pregnancy might prevent babies being born addicted, but starting life in
prison doesn't appear to be a good alternative.

Possibly what we need is a children's bill of rights: to be wanted and
loved; to have two stable parents; to have the best prenatal care and a
supportive community.

I might be accused of being a Nazi, but maybe there should be some program
to prevent such women from having babies. Before all the pro-life and
anti-birth control groups get on my case, let me make this suggestion:

Sign up to adopt a few crack babies and other kids in foster care. When all
have loving homes, then organize to promote your political agenda.