HOSPITAL DRUG TESTS, ARRESTS SPARK HOT DEBATE BY JUSTICES

WASHINGTON (AP) - Hearing a case in which women were arrested from their
hospital beds, Supreme Court justices Wednesday vigorously debated whether
hospitals can test pregnant women for drug use and turn the results over 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 of South Carolina contend that the
hospital's former cocaine-testing policy violated pregnant patients' privacy
and their constitutional protection against unreasonable searches.

The women ``were searched by their doctors 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 are 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
cocaine use during pregnancy.

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 justices questioned both sides closely.

Justice David H. Souter suggested to Smith that doctors might have ``a
special need to know'' whether their patients are using drugs. But he also
asked Hood whether doctors who reported positive test results had become
agents of the police.

Scalia compared the hospital's policy to a requirement in many states that
doctors tell police when they encounter evidence of a crime, such as a
gunshot wound.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor asked whether drug tests are routinely performed
on pregnant women. ``Absolutely not, your honor,'' said Smith, who added
that the testing policy was initiated by the hospital but jointly drawn up
by police and hospital officials.

There have been similar prosecutions in other states, but they occurred on a
case-by-case basis and not through a hospital policy of turning drug tests
over to police, said Janet Crepps of the Center for Reproductive Law and
Policy, which is representing the 10 women. Most of those prosecutions were
thrown out on grounds that state child-endangerment laws did not apply to
fetuses, she said.

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.

The hospital began testing pregnant women for cocaine in 1989 and giving any
positive results to police. Women found to be using illegal drugs were
prosecuted under the state child-endangerment law.

The hospital later dropped the policy, but by then police had arrested 30
maternity patients.

A federal court jury upheld the testing policy, and the 4th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals agreed in July 1999. The appeals court said the urine tests
were ``minimally intrusive'' and that hospital officials had a substantial
interest in reducing cocaine use by pregnant women.