SUPREME COURT HEARS PRIVACY ARGUMENTS

WASHINGTON - Hearing a case in which women were arrested from their
hospital beds, Supreme Court justices Wednesday debated whether hospitals
can test pregnant women for drug use and give the results to police.

"This is being done for medical purposes," suggested Justice Antonin
Scalia. "The police didn't show up at the hospital and say, 'We'd like to
find a way to bust your patients.' "

But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she did not see how arresting women
after they gave birth would protect the fetus, the primary concern of a
South Carolina public hospital. "I looked at the (hospital) consent form;
it doesn't say anything about police," she said.

Women treated at the Medical University 6f South Carolina contend that the
hospital's former cocaine-testing policy violate pregnant patients' privacy
and their constitutional protection against unreasonable searches.

The women "were searched by their doctor for evidence of crimes and then
arrested, seven of them right out of their hospital beds," said Priscilla
Smith, the lawyer for the women who sued.

The hospital's attorney, Robert Hood, said the women were jailed "not only
for the illegal use of the drug but for what they were doing to their child."

"We am trying to stop a woman from doing irreparable, major harm to her
child in utero."

"Law enforcement was not the purpose of this thing at all," Hood added.

A federal appeals court upheld the tests as legitimate efforts to reduce
crack cocaine use by pregnant women.

The Supreme Court's ruling, expected by July, could determine whether the
hospital reinstates the policy or whether other hospitals consider adopting
similar tactics.

Ten women who sued the Charleston hospital in 1993 said testing pregnant
women for drugs and giving the results to police violated the
Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which generally requires that searches be
authorized by court warrant or based on reasonable suspicion that a crime
has been committed.

The American Medical Association, in a friend-of-the-court brief, said the
hospital's policy was more likely to increase harm to fetuses by
discouraging women from seeking medical care or disclosing drug use to
their doctors.