HIGH COURT EXAMINES DRUG-TEST `SEARCHES' OF PREGNANT WOMEN

Justices Appear To Favor Tougher Tactics Over Privacy Rights

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court took up an unusual drug-testing case
Wednesday that pits the privacy rights of pregnant women against the
government's power to protect unborn children from danger.

Amid the ``crack baby'' crisis of the 1980s, a public hospital in
Charleston, S.C., began working with police and prosecutors there to punish
pregnant women who were using cocaine. Some were arrested and taken to jail
just after giving birth.

Ten women sued the city-run hospital, alleging they were unknowingly
subjected to unreasonable police searches, a violation of the
Constitution's Fourth Amendment. But they lost in the lower courts, and
their claim received a cool reception from the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

It is ``routine in today's world'' for patients to have a urine test, said
Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, questioning why this would be seen as an
unreasonable search.

``This was being done for medical purposes,'' said Justice Antonin Scalia.
``The police didn't show up and say, `We want to find a way to bust your
patients.' ''

An attorney for the women replied that her clients were not complaining
about medical tests. Rather, they were upset because the test results were
immediately given to the police.

The doctors and nurses ``became, in effect, the police,'' said Priscilla J.
Smith, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy in New
York. ``This program was designed by and for law enforcement.''

The tenor of the oral argument showed again that the ``war on drugs'' has
strong support in the high court.

During this first week of the new term, the justices have heard two cases
that test the frontiers of the drug war.

In one, from Indianapolis, police are seeking the authority to stop cars at
city roadblocks to check for drugs. The Charleston case tests whether a
hospital and the police can work together to check patients for drugs. A
majority of the justices sounded as though they would side with the police
in both cases.

In the South Carolina case, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va.,
sided with the hospital and ruled the searches were legal because officials
had a ``special need'' to protect unborn children from cocaine. Robert H.
Hood of Charleston, an attorney for the hospital, agreed, saying the
doctors and nurses were trying to prevent ``child abuse.''

Some justices, led by John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, pointed
out that the drug-testing policy seemed to be directed at low-income black
women. Ginsburg wondered how calling the police would help protect a fetus
since several of the women were arrested after they gave birth.

The justices will issue a written ruling in several months.