A BREAK FOR UNBORNS

The right of the people to be secure in their persons against unreasonable
searches and seizures is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. So what's
more unreasonable than having hospitals test pregnant women for drugs
without their consent and turn the results over to police?

This was permitted under South Carolina law until the U.S. Supreme Court
rightly struck it down on privacy grounds last week. Such tests require a
search warrant or consent, the justices said.

The 6-3 decision banning non-consensual drug testing by hospital personnel
is a welcome affirmation that pregnant women have the same doctor-patient
confidentiality rights as all Americans.

The tattle-tale testing program, lobbied through the Legislature by state
Attorney General Charlie Condon in the early 1990s when he was a Charleston
prosecutor, was designed to protect unborn babies from their drug-addicted
moms. When confronted with the results of a drug-tainted urine test,
addicted mothers would almost always opt for prenatal treatment instead of
going to jail.

At first this appeared to be creative use of the law to protect the health
of both the unborn and the mother. But experience shows that even on this
practical level the law failed.

Aiken County Coroner Sue Townsend is well aware of the unintended
consequences - many crack-addicted babies needlessly dying because their
mothers, fearful of being arrested and charged with child endangerment,
refused to seek any prenatal care at all.

In light of the high court ruling, Townsend is optimistic this will change.
"Our hope now is that these women with drug problems will have no fear of
prosecution and will get back into prenatal care," she says. "They are not
going to get their urine screened without their consent."

Aiken County's fetal and infant mortality review board documents Townsend's
informal findings, that pregnant women's failure to seek prenatal care is a
leading cause of infant mortality.

Even so, the board has played a key role in lowering the county's infant
mortality rate from 12.1 per 1,000 live births in 1989 to 7.8 per thousand
in 1998 (the latest year figures are available). That panel, too, expects
the court ruling will encourage more moms to get medical help in time to
save their babies.