FETAL RIGHTS GOING TOO FAR?

Some Say Trend Is A Risk To Women

In Arkansas, lawmakers are considering making it a crime for a
pregnant woman to take a drag off a cigarette.

In Utah, a woman is serving 18 months' probation for child
endangerment after she refused to undergo a Caesarean section to save
her twins, one of whom died. In Wisconsin and South Dakota,
authorities can take pregnant women into custody for abusing alcohol or drugs.

And July 1 in Alabama, Brody's Law took effect. It enables
prosecutors to level two charges against anyone who attacks a
pregnant woman and harms her fetus.

Common-sense measures to protect America's most helpless
citizens-to-be ... or something else?

Abortion rights groups see this revived wave of "fetal protectionism"
as a setup to make a fetus a person, entitled to constitutional
rights, contrary to how the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade.

But anti-abortion forces -- plus some groups with no stake in the
fetal rights debate -- say it's a no-brainer that society should do
whatever it can to keep developing babies safe and healthy.

"It's an economic issue and a public health issue," said state Rep.
Bob Mathis, an Arkansas Democrat who touts a record backing abortion
rights and recently floated the idea of a smoking ban during pregnancy.

Critics of fetal rights legislation see a slippery slope. In some
states, prosecutors have turned such laws against mothers whose
behavior -- typically methamphetamine or crack use -- may have
contributed to a stillbirth or to costly birth defects.

Taken further, could authorities charge pregnant women who reject a
doctor's advice to take prenatal vitamins and then miscarry? How
about banning them from playing sports?

"What we're seeing is a political trend in which the fetuses are
coming first, and the rights of women ... are coming last," said Lynn
M. Paltrow, executive director of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

In South Carolina, Regina McKnight is serving 12 years for killing
her unborn child by smoking crack, as jurors saw it.

Still, many courts are uneasy about how far fetal rights can go.

Saying prosecutors overreached, a Texas appeals court last year
unanimously threw out the convictions of two women charged with
"delivering" cocaine and methamphetamine to their babies through the
umbilical cord.

Even Mathis harbors doubts about the state's ability to enforce an
anti-smoking law. "The more I think about it ... you might end up
with a fat lip" if police approach a smoker who is overweight but not
pregnant, he said.