FETUS-RIGHTS STATUTES HOLD MOTHERS LIABLE

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

In Utah, a woman serves 18 months' probation for child endangerment
after refusing to undergo a Caesarean section to save her twins, one
of whom died. In South Carolina, Regina McKnight is serving a 12-year
prison sentence for killing her unborn child by smoking crack, as
jurors saw it. They needed 15 minutes to deliberate, and the U.S.
Supreme Court let the verdict stand. 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 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. A tragedy in Wichita, Kan., last month underscored the
intractable politics at work. The killing of 14-year-old Chelsea
Brooks, who was nine months pregnant, became a political cause
celebre after her family learned that the state could not file
homicide charges in the death of Alexa - the daughter Chelsea was carrying.

Three people, including her boyfriend, have been charged in Chelsea's
killing, which authorities say was a murder for hire. Legislative
inaction this year on a fetal homicide bill kept Kansas from joining
more than 30 states, including Missouri, where murder laws include
the unborn as legal victims.

The anti-abortion group Kansans For Life leapt on the controversy,
accusing Senate moderates and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of "kowtowing"
to abortion-rights forces by stalling a bill that might have given
Chelsea's family the justice it sought.

Critics of fetal-rights legislation see a slippery slope in the
making. 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?

And why not punish alcoholic men whose addiction, studies show, could
affect sperm and produce birth defects?

"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. "I think 30 years of anti-abortion rhetoric - 'women killing
their babies' - has led to a moral vilification that doesn't just
stick to those who seek to terminate a pregnancy. It's spreading to
all pregnant women." The Center for Reproductive Rights says six
states passed fetal homicide bills last year, but others have had
them on the books for decades. In California, fetal homicide laws
date to before the legalization of abortion and were successfully
leveled against Scott Peterson, convicted in the well-publicized
murder of his wife, Laci, and the son she was carrying, Connor.
Abortion foes in 2004 cheered President Bush when he signed the
Unborn Victims of Violence Act - the Laci and Connor Law - providing
protections for fetuses harmed in the commission of a federal crime.
Still, many courts have been 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 under the
state's Prenatal Protection Act for "delivering" cocaine and
methamphetamine to their babies through the umbilical cord.

"It makes sense that if a woman's right to privacy encompasses
decisions regarding procreation, such as contraception and abortion,
it should also include decisions regarding health during pregnancy,"
wrote Chicago lawyer Erin N. Linder in the September issue of
University of Illinois Law Review. Even Mathis, the Arkansas
legislator, 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.