FETAL PROTECTION

It's TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Juan Williams.

In South Carolina today the state Supreme Court heard the case of
Brenda Peppers, a woman who was addicted to crack when she had a
stillborn child. In 1999, prosecutors charged her with abusing her
unborn child by taking cocaine while pregnant and she received a
sentence of two years' probation. But Regina McKnight, another South
Carolinian, got a more harsh sentence. McKnight's child was also
stillborn eight months into her pregnancy. Two weeks ago, McKnight
became the first woman ever to be charged with the murder of her
stillborn child. She was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Advocates for abortion rights see these lawsuits as backdoor efforts
to undermine abortion rights law. But South Carolina prosecutors say
drug use by pregnant women is the same thing as child abuse. They say
a fetus should have the same protection against harm as a child.

Today on the TALK OF THE NATION, fetal protection and the rights of
the unborn. Where do we draw the line? Let's begin the hour with
NPR's Adam Hochberg, who's in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION, Adam.

ADAM HOCHBERG (NPR Reporter): Good to be here.

WILLIAMS: Now, Adam, in 1997, the South Carolina Supreme Court
declared that a pregnant woman can be prosecuted criminally and
sentenced to as much as 10 years in prison for using drugs while she's
pregnant. Exactly how does that law apply to the case that's being
heard today?

HOCHBERG: Well, the case that's being heard today in the South
Carolina Supreme Court, as you mentioned, involves Brenda Peppers.
And basically her attorneys and the legal team that she has is made up
of people from the American Civil Liberties Union and some groups who
have been very active in this fetal rights issue. They're asking the
South Carolina Supreme Court to look again at that 1997 decision.
They're saying that the Supreme Court overstepped its authority
basically, walked into an area that should have been left to the
Legislature to decide. If the Legislature wanted to debate and pass a
bill that said that fetuses in South Carolina have the same rights as
people, then the Legislature had the right to do that. But they say
that the court overstepped and they say that the court misinterpreted
some earlier laws and basically drew the wrong decision in that 1996
case.

WILLIAMS: We're talking with NPR's Adam Hochberg, who's in Raleigh,
North Carolina. Adam, as I am finding in the research here, this
October 1997 case in South Carolina called Whitner vs. State of South
Carolina, the state high court, the state Supreme Court said that a
viable fetus is, quote, "a child" and that the state's criminal child
endangerment statute applied to pregnant women who exposed the fetus
to even a risk of harm. So how do they distinguish between a woman
who, let's say, smokes cigarettes or drinks alcohol vs. a woman who
takes cocaine?

HOCHBERG: Well, the case that you're talking about involved--you
mentioned it was the Whitner decision, and that refers to Cornelia
Whitner, who was a young woman who delivered a baby. And the baby in
the Whitner case, we should clarify, survived. The baby was not
stillborn and the baby is alive today. And Cornelia Whitner is still
in prison. She was, in fact, arrested at the medical center and taken
off and handcuffed and put in jail and then tried. Almost all of these
cases in South Carolina have involved women who were addicted to crack
cocaine. And that was the intent of state prosecutors when they first
began prosecuting these kinds of cases in the mid-'80s. It was a
reaction at the time to the war on drugs, in large part, and also was
an attempt by the state attorney general, Charlie Condon, who was then
a local prosecutor, to try to send a message about the importance of
human life. And, of course, Mr. Condon, who's now a Republican
candidate for governor, has been very outspoken on the issue of fetal
protection and fetal rights, and the abortion issue as well.

As for whether these kinds of prosecutions could extend to alcohol and
cigarettes, I think the answer to that is we'll know it when a
prosecutor decides to try it. Almost all of these cases have involved
crack. I think there have been a couple that have involved marijuana.
If a prosecutor wanted to try to go after a woman who had smoked
during pregnancy and harmed her fetus in that way, he could try that
or she could try that and we could see whether it would fly with the
jury.

WILLIAMS: Now, Adam, what about the idea that addicted pregnant women,
or women who might occasionally use drugs recreationally are avoiding
prenatal care for their child because of the fear of being found to
have drugs in their system and then being arrested?

HOCHBERG: That's a contention of a lot of people who are opposed to
the South Carolina policy, including a number of doctors groups and
medical groups. Just about all the medical groups in South Carolina
and nationally are opposed to these kinds of laws, the American
Medical Association and all kinds of health organizations. And what
they say is that if a woman is addicted to a drug and she becomes
pregnant, the fear of prosecution might scare her away from seeking
prenatal care. It might scare her away from going to the doctor's
office. They also say that it interferes with confidentiality within
the doctor-patient relationship. If a doctor becomes aware of a
patient who is using drugs while she's pregnant, well, is the doctor
then obligated to call the police and have her handcuffed and hauled
away? Physicians do not want to be in that role.

The other side of that argument--and you hear this from people in the
prosecutorial community in South Carolina and others who support these
fetal rights laws--is that they say that while this is an interesting
hypothetical discussion, that in the real world women who care so
little about their baby's health that they use drugs during pregnancy,
well, they probably wouldn't seek prenatal care anyway.

WILLIAMS: Now, Adam, what about other states across the country? Are
they also taking action, imposing laws that would allow for some
protection for the fetus even while the--you know, protection from its
own mother in terms of the mother using drugs?

HOCHBERG: Well, there have been about 30 states where this has been an
issue and it comes up in various ways. Sometimes it's discussed in
the state Legislature. Sometimes we have a situation like the one in
South Carolina where a prosecutor will bring a case and then the case
will progress up through the appellate level all the way to the state
Supreme Court. As of now, in every state except South Carolina, where
one of these cases has gotten to the appellate level, in every case,
the state Supreme Court has come down in favor of the mother. In
other words, the high courts in these other states are saying that a
mother cannot be prosecuted under a criminal statute for harming her
own fetus during pregnancy. In other words, every other state has
come to a different conclusion than the South Carolina Supreme Court.

Now there are some states--Ohio is one of them--where courts have
found that a woman might be civilly liable for abusing her fetus
before birth. Or there are states where the woman's behavior before
birth might affect a child custody case. But as far as prosecuting a
woman with a criminal law, prosecuting her for child abuse or
prosecuting her for homicide, South Carolina is unique.

WILLIAMS: We're talking with Adam Hochberg, NPR's correspondent in
Raleigh. And, Adam, I was wondering about a March decision from the
United States Supreme Court, which ruled that public hospitals cannot
test pregnant women for drugs and then turn the results over to
women--to the police, I should say--without the woman's consent. Does
that have any impact on what's going on in South Carolina?

HOCHBERG: Another South Carolina case. That case came from South
Carolina and that involved the state attorney general, Attorney
General Condon, who as a local prosecutor in the 1980s instituted an
aggressive program with a local hospital where women at that time were
tested for drugs, sometimes without their consent, and if they tested
positive, they sometimes were handcuffed and jailed and hauled out of
the hospital. The US Supreme Court outlawed that practice earlier
this year. But what they were looking at there was the question of
whether that secret test, that test without the woman's consent,
constituted an illegal search and seizure. And the US Supreme Court
found that, in fact, it did. It said that women could not be tested
for drugs without their consent.

WILLIAMS: But the court...

HOCHBERG: The US Supreme Court--I'm sorry. Go ahead.

WILLIAMS: But the Supreme--no, I'm sorry, Adam. But the US Supreme
Court has not spoken to the idea of whether or not the South Carolina
Legislature is right in saying that women can be prosecuted for using
drugs while pregnant.

HOCHBERG: No, the US Supreme Court was asked to take a look at that
issue and it did not take the case. And, again, to clarify, this was
not a South Carolina legislative decision, but rather it was a
decision by the South Carolina Supreme Court.

WILLIAMS: I see. But I thought the law was enacted by the
Legislature.

HOCHBERG: No, and I think that's a real important clarification to
make, that this was, in fact, case law; that this was a policy that is
being carried out in South Carolina because of a state Supreme Court
ruling. And that's getting back to that Whitner decision that we
talked about. That's the ruling where the South Carolina Supreme Court
said that a fetus after 24 weeks is, in fact, a person as far as the
state's criminal laws are concerned. That's not a piece of
legislation that the South Carolina General Assembly has ever passed.

WILLIAMS: My goodness. All right. Well, thanks for joining us,
Adam.

HOCHBERG: Thank you.

WILLIAMS: NPR's Adam Hochberg.

Joining us for the hour are our guests: Lynn Paltrow, executive
director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Welcome to the
program, Ms. Paltrow.

Ms. LYNN PALTROW (Executive Director, National Advocates for Pregnant
Women): Thanks for having me.

WILLIAMS: Also with us, Bert von Herrmann, assistant solicitor for the
Horry County Solicitor's Office in South Carolina. Welcome, Mr. von
Herrmann.

Mr. BERT VON HERRMANN (Assistant Solicitor, Horry County Solicitor's
Office): Good to be here.

WILLIAMS: Both of them are speaking to us today from member station
WLTR in Columbia, South Carolina.

And we invite you to join the conversation. Our number is (800)
989-8255; that's (800) 989-TALK. The e-mail address,
totn@npr.org.

Mr. von Herrmann, let me begin with you and ask about South Carolina
and the law here. South Carolina stands alone so far with a case law
that allows them to prosecute pregnant women who use drugs. Why is
that? Why is South Carolina the only state where this is taking place?

Mr. VON HERRMANN: Well, first of all, I think we need to clear up the
issue with the law. The law was actually enacted by the Legislature.
It's called homicide by child abuse. It can carry, depending on which
section of the statute you're convicted under, either 0 to 20 years,
or 20 years to life. That particular statute for which Ms. Regina
McKnight was prosecuted on was, in fact, enacted by our Legislature
sometime back. It's not a new process. The actual definition that
comes from the case law actually expands the term person or child to
that of a viable fetus.

You have to understand there are checks and balances within our
system. There's a threshold question as to whether the child is viable
or not, and it's not simply a particular day or a week in the child's
life. It becomes a specific medical and legal term.

WILLIAMS: Well, I think I see here that, in fact, it was a state law
that's in effect since 1989 that allows prosecutors in South Carolina
to prosecute pregnant women for child abuse, drug distribution, even
murder if they take illegal drugs after their fetus is deemed to be
viable. So that's after 12 weeks?

Mr. VON HERRMANN: No, sir. No, sir. I believe that's a complete
misconception with the law. The homicide by child abuse statute is
very specific to indications or examples where mothers or fathers or
other individuals actually kill the child, homicide being the killing
of one by another, by child abuse. The effort by the Supreme Court to
interpret person or child was simply extended to that of a viable
fetus. And a viable fetus in essence means a child who would be able
to live independent of its mother without medical attention.

WILLIAMS: And so is that judged to be about a 12-week
term?

Mr. VON HERRMANN: No, sir. Twelve-week term would not be more than--I
mean, that would be the first trimester.

WILLIAMS: Right. So when is it judged to be viable?

Mr. VON HERRMANN: A pathologist has to look at the indications from
the baby. There has to be a pathology report.

WILLIAMS: Oh, I see. So it's case by case?

Mr. VON HERRMANN: Absolutely. Absolutely.

WILLIAMS: All right. Ms. Paltrow, you were in the South Carolina
Supreme Court today to talk about one of these maternal fetal abuse
cases. What happened?

Ms. PALTROW: The court did give Brenda Peppers an opportunity to argue
that their decision in the previous cases was wrong. Mr. Rockwise(ph)
represented her beautifully and raised many of the issues that we're
going to be talking about on this show. And I think the most
important one is none of this has anything to do with protecting
children. There's not a medical group in the country that thinks that
arresting pregnant women protects children. There's not even a child
advocacy group that I'm aware of that thinks this protects children.
And the Whitner decision that was at issue today didn't just apply to
illegal drugs. It said a viable fetus is a person and, in effect,
rewrote a statute that says anything a woman does that endangers the
life, health or comfort of a child and now viable fetus can go to jail
as a child abuser for 10 years.

And, in fact, there has been an arrest in South Carolina for a woman
who drank alcohol while pregnant. I recently got a call from a
guardian ad litem who wanted to use the Whitner decision as a basis
for forcing a woman to have an unwanted Caesarean section on the
theory that a woman's decision that she wasn't ready to be cut open is
child abuse. And...

WILLIAMS: Well let's talk about this more in a moment. We have to
take a short break. We're talking about laws that allow pregnant
women to be prosecuted for exposing their fetuses to abuse through
illegal drug use. And we're taking your calls at (800) 989-TALK. Send
us e-mail. The address, totn@npr.org.

I'm Juan Williams. It's TALK OF THE NATION from NPR
News.

(Soundbite of music)

WILLIAMS: It's TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Juan Williams.

We're talking about drug use among pregnant women and whether harm to
unborn fetuses should be treated as a criminal offense. Our guests
are Lynn M. Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for
Pregnant Women; and Bert von Herrmann, assistant solicitor for the
Horry County Solicitor's Office in South Carolina. Both join us today
from member station WLTR in Columbia, South Carolina.

You're invited to join the discussion, too. (800) 989-TALK. Our
e-mail address, totn@npr.org.

Ms. Paltrow, before the break, you were saying that someone has even
asked you if they could use the South Carolina law to force a woman to
have a Caesarean. So you say this is really not about protecting the
rights of a child or a fetus; you think it's about abortion law and
forcing women to do what someone else wants them to do.

Ms. PALTROW: I wouldn't say it that way. I think this is in part--it
is political because no one, I think, can seriously say that this
approach has helped any child in the state of South Carolina. Since
the Whitner decision, infant mortality has gone up consistently.
After a decade of decreasing infant mortality, you get the Whitner
decision. And there was one year and we thought, well, you know, you
can't necessarily tie that to the decision. Now we have two years.
And that's a very serious increase since the decision. And it's
consistent with exactly what the medical groups predicted, that if you
threaten women with the possibility of going to jail, they're not
going to come in for prenatal care and for what little treatment there
is available in this state. And let me just say there's very little
drug treatment available to anybody with a drug problem, but
particularly and especially for pregnant women.

And just to give you an example from today's case, this is not a state
that is protecting viable fetuses. When Brenda Peppers was seven
months pregnant, they put her in jail. And when they put her jail,
they put her in a small room with 15 other women. She was forced to
sleep on a mat on the floor, sometimes near an overflowing toilet.
She wasn't allowed milk or juice because the other inmates couldn't
get it. She wasn't given the medical attention she requested and she
ended up with something called help syndrome and nearly died from it.
It's a syndrome that has nothing to do with cocaine or being addicted
to cocaine. And, in fact, we now know--the Journal of the American
Medical Association just published a lead article saying the crack
baby myth is alive and well but it's not true. Alcohol is clearly
much more dangerous, potentially damaging than cocaine; that cocaine
is like cigarettes.

And so if they're serious about protecting children, the last thing
they would do is threaten women with prison. They would make
treatment available. It's cost-effective. It can work. And they
would stop turning doctors and hospitals into prosecutors and weigh
stations to jail, because that is what's happening to the women and
children of South Carolina.

WILLIAMS: Now, Ms. Paltrow, a moment ago you said that I wasn't right
in saying that this therefore was about really forcing a woman to
behave in a certain way while she's pregnant. You said that's a
little bit too harsh. But I'm thinking, well, isn't abortion the
bottom line in your analysis, that this is a case that really is about
abortion rights in the United States?

Ms. PALTROW: Well, it certainly is very much about the anti-choice
argument that fetuses, as a matter of law, should be defined as
persons. And if they are defined as persons, it's much, much bigger
than abortion because the clients we represent are not women who want
abortions. In fact, if Regina McKnight had had an illegal abortion,
she would be in jail for only two years. She wanted to have a baby,
but she had the disease of addiction for which there was absolutely no
treatment in her county, for which this minute if they bothered to
offer it to her, she probably could not find treatment in the state.
So it's not that it's not about abortion, because the attorney general
has stood up, his office has said before the state Supreme Court that
since Whitner, if a woman had an abortion after viability, with malice
and aforethought, she not only could be prosecuted for murder, but she
and the doctor could both get the death penalty.

So, yes, it is about abortion, but it's also about a whole lot of
women who want to have babies, who simply need treatment and help.
And instead the state is saying, 'We're willing to spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars to imprison a Regina McKnight, but we are going
to be the state that spent the least amount of money in the entire
country on drug treatment.

WILLIAMS: Mr. von Herrmann, I wanted to ask you to respond to what Ms.
Paltrow is saying. Again, let me remind everyone who's tuned in that
what we're talking about here is a case in which a 23-year-old, Regina
McKnight, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. She had given birth to
a stillborn baby and the baby tested positive for some cocaine in its
blood, evidence that the mother had been using cocaine. And under the
law in South Carolina, that meant that the mother could be prosecuted
for abuse. Is that right, Mr. von Herrmann?

Mr. VON HERRMANN: No, sir. The evidence that came out at trial was
that Ms. McKnight, when she gave birth to a stillborn child that was a
viable fetus at the time, in fact, later named Mercedes McKnight, her
daughter, she contained within her body a large amount of degradated
product of cocaine, as well as the child. The child was dead. She
was prosecuted for homicide by child abuse, which the jury, after
seeing all of the exhibits and hearing all the testimony and expert
testimony, determined that the cause of that death was, in fact, her
cocaine ingestion.

In fact, the evidence from her words herself were, 'I did crack
cocaine as much and as often as I could, and especially on weekends.'
This doesn't sound like a mother to me that wanted a child. She
certainly had three or four other children not living with her that
she hadn't take care of. In fact, she had tried to move in several
times with her father, who would not let her be around the children
because she continued to partake of crack cocaine and cocaine. There's
no indications to this. In fact, quite to the contrary.

Ms. Paltrow, you know, she says she represents advocates for pregnant
women when, in fact, what she really advocates for is a small amount
of the pregnant women out here. I cannot tell you after her last
conversation on Court Television the number of pregnant women that
called me and told me, 'She does not represent me.' The ones that she
represents are the individuals who are pregnant and choose to continue
to do or engage in illegal activity, namely taking illegal drugs.
That's who she represents. So when she says, 'I'm representing all of
the pregnant women,' she's not.

WILLIAMS: And when Ms. Paltrow makes the argument that this is really
about abortion rights, what do you say?

Mr. VON HERRMANN: Well, let me address one thing, and let me get to
that. Ms. Paltrow--or, excuse me--Ms. McKnight got pregnant while she
was out on bond. Ms. Paltrow and her organization provided absolutely
no drug counseling, not prenatal care, anything to Ms. McKnight. As a
matter of fact, I'm not even absolutely positive that Ms. Paltrow ever
met Regina McKnight. I know she wasn't present for the trial. I know
she didn't see the exhibits, hear the testimony. And I don't think
she reviewed the evidence as the jury and the judge ultimately did.

WILLIAMS: Well, she's sitting right there, so let's ask her. By the
way, I'm the one who says that I think it's about abortion, not Ms.
Paltrow. Ms. Paltrow, go right ahead. Were you there? Do you know
Ms. McKnight?

Ms. PALTROW: I was asked to speak on behalf of the issue. I was not
at trial. My colleague Wyndi Anderson, our national organizer, was
there. And we provided assistance to the very able public defender,
Ms. McKnight. What you haven't hear is the first trial ended with a
mistrial because jurors were so confused about the evidence that some
of them went on the Internet. And in this particular trial, one of the
key witnesses that had been there the first time couldn't make it, a
national expert who had testified that there simply was no evidence
that cocaine, to a medical certainty, caused this stillbirth. In
fact, she had a variety of health problems. Five hundred women a year
in South Carolina have stillbirths. Nationally, 900,000 women have
miscarriages. Thousands more experience stillbirths. And most of the
time, we simply don't know the cause.

This is a state that has chosen to address what is a health problem.
Women don't take drugs while they're pregnant because they don't care
about their babies. They became addicted sometime earlier in their
life. Many of them, when people meet drug-addicted pregnant women,
they should realize that they're looking at somebody who was probably
raped when she was a little girl or experienced some other trauma,
turned to drugs to numb out that pain and then became pregnant.

WILLIAMS: Well, let me speak for Mr. von Herrmann's position for a
second. What if someone said, 'OK, so we should have some sympathy for
this woman,' but shouldn't we also have some sympathy for this unborn
child?

Ms. PALTROW: You bet. And the way to express that is to make
available confidential, appropriate treatment. Cornelia Whitner gave
birth to a perfectly healthy baby. She got eight years in jail. We
are picking and choosing which women we are going to treat as
criminals and are bad.

Let me just make an analogy here. Cornelia Whitner gives birth to a
perfectly healthy baby but had a drug problem for which there was not
a single treatment program in the state at the time she had that
problem. She got eight years in jail. Chris Collins is a woman from
another state who took a fertility drug, became pregnant with
sextuplets, refused to reduce; one of those babies died, one of them
has a severe disability and all of them needed expensive physical
therapy. She didn't get jail. She's not called a murderer. She made
choices and decisions to go through with that pregnancy and one of
them died. And we think of her as a hero.

This is not about protecting children or fetuses, because if it were,
then Chris Collins would have to go to jail as well. This is about
the drug war, the stigma against people, a particular group of people
with one illness, a chronic, relapsing illness, and saying we can put
them in jail instead of figuring out why are they using drugs and how
can we help them. Thank goodness women who have cocaine problems can
have healthy babies. But if we're serious about protecting children
from harm, then we're going to have to look at the women who are using
alcohol, the women who are smoking tobacco, because if we don't arrest
them as well, then you're admitting that you're not protecting
fetuses, you're protecting the alcohol and tobacco industry.

WILLIAMS: Christie in Clinton, Iowa, go right ahead. You're on TALK
OF THE NATION.

CHRISTIE (Caller): Hi. Yes. First of all, I wanted to say that we
don't even know what causes miscarriage. And second of all, I wanted
to say that society is not interested in protecting fetuses, 'cause we
still have Listeria, food poisoning, that causes a spontaneous
miscarriage. Women are fired from dry-cleaning jobs 'cause
dry-cleaning chemicals cause disformations, and there's mercury in the
water. And doctors still cut the umbilical cord before it's done
pulsing, causing many infants, after birth, even, to die because
they're not getting oxygen anymore from their mothers, and they're not
breathing. So...

WILLIAMS: Now, Christie, I'm thinking to myself as I'm listening,
that's different than a mother taking drugs, taking cocaine. We know
cocaine's not going to...

CHRISTIE: Well, who's responsible for the Listeria? I mean, they
don't sue the meat companies that have the contamination. They don't
sue--I mean, wouldn't it be society's responsibility if it was murder?

WILLIAMS: No, what I'm thinking about's the mother's responsibility,
'cause what the prosecutors in South Carolina are doing, they're going
after the mother. I mean, the mother doesn't know she's taking in
tainted meat. No one's going to eat tainted meat intentionally.

CHRISTIE: No, I'm saying that society isn't interested in protecting
the fetus. They're just interested in making it hard on women.

WILLIAMS: Well, let's ask Mr. von Herrmann to respond. Thanks for
your call, Christie.

Mr. VON HERRMANN: That's just absolutely untrue. You know, one of the
things that I was asked when we started doing this case, afterwards,
and we started talking to the media is, you know, 'What is this case
about?' And this case is about two things. First, it's about young
Mercedes McKnight, who never had an opportunity to take her first
breath because her mother ingested crack cocaine, and continued to do
so throughout her pregnancy. But keep in mind, we have two questions
that have to be asked before they can ever do the homicide by child
abuse. The threshold question is viability, which is completely
consistent with Roe v. Wade and every other safeguard on abortion. The
abortion issue does not play into this, period.

Second thing is that the jury must find, as per the statute, that the
death occurred under extreme indifference to human life. In other
words, when the child died, somebody had to do something that was
extremely indifferent to that human life, and I can think of nothing
that shows more extreme indifference to human life than a mother who
knows she's pregnant, who continues to engage in this activity. In
our office and in our jurisdiction, we have an amnesty program. If a
person who is on crack cocaine, marijuana, has an alcohol problem or
any problem and is pregnant, comes forward and seeks treatment, seeks
help, we're not going to prosecute them for that.

So to say that our program and our prosecution are keeping women from
getting the help they need is absolutely untrue. The...

WILLIAMS: Now what about the argument that, 'Well, gee, you're just
talking about poor women, especially poor black women, if you're
talking about crack cocaine, but you're not talking about a
middle-class white woman who might be a cigarette smoker, who might
drink a lot of alcohol, which could be just as damaging to that fetus'?

Mr. VON HERRMANN: Well, let me first address the alcohol issue. If an
individual comes forward and says, 'I have an alcohol problem. I have
a problem where I ingest a huge amount of alcohol and I'm worried
about my child,' we're going to get that person help. To say that we
don't have facilities to help drug addicts, to help people with
alcohol problems, is simply not true. Do we have enough of them?
Absolutely not. But we can't force people to come in and take a part
of this money. Ms. Paltrow and her organization says, 'What y'all
need to do is provide all of this stuff.' Well, when she knew that
Regina McKnight was pregnant again and facing trial and still on crack
cocaine, her organization didn't provide the necessary prenatal care
nor the drug treatment. They certainly, apparently, have more
resources than we do.

We're trying to address these problems. But the first thing we have
to realize is we have to punish the people that don't care about their
child, and that's what it boils down to. They, at some point, were
not born as an addict. They began smoking crack cocaine on their own.
And to say that it's the crack cocaine is the problem is analogous to
saying that when Adam and Eve were sitting in the Garden of Eden and
they looked at the apple, the apple was the problem. And it's just
simply not true. We need to get these mothers to have responsibility,
to quit using crack cocaine, and to start taking care of their
children. And...

[continued in Part 2 at http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01.n1119.a04.html ]