WHEN BREAST FEEDING IS LETHAL

SOCIAL ISSUES: Involuntary manslaughter charges against an Orange woman
spur a civil rights debate.

A woman whose infant dies from drinking her mother's drug-laced breast milk
- - as allegedly occurred in an Orange home - isn't necessarily subject to
criminal charges.

Unless she knew that doing so could kill her baby,

"We have to prove that it was not an accident," said Orange County Deputy
District Attorney Elizabeth Henderson. "Did the person act in a grossly
negligent manner?"

Henderson said her office has evidence - including interviews and
toxicological reports - showing that Cynthia Ann Pinson criminally killed
her 6-week-old son by breast-feeding him after taking methamphetamines. But
she wouldn't disclose details.

Pinson, 38, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter, and a warrant
for her arrest was issued this week. But authorities haven't found her.

If convicted, Pinson could be the first woman in the country to be
successfully prosecuted for killing her child through her breast milk, said
Walter B. Connolly Jr., a Detroit-based civil rights and constitutional
lawyer who is an expert on child-endangerment cases involving drugs.

Henderson cited the 1994 prosecution of a Bakersfield woman, in which a
jury deadlocked, 11-1, in favor of a murder conviction, but convicted her
of child endangerment.

In that case, a woman who occasionally snorted methamphetamine to keep
herself from falling asleep poisoned her baby with her breast milk.

Henderson said proving child endangerment is similar to proving involuntary
manslaughter: both require gross negligence,l though typically, nobody dies
in child-endangerment cases.

Also, she said, the facts of these kinds of cases must be weighted in the
same way charges would be weighed in a death caused by a drunken driver.

"Just because you drive drunk (and kill somebody) doesn't mean you're
guilty of second-degree murder," she said.

But if someone was previously convicted of driving under the influence or,
say, took classes warning of its dangers, then he or she could be
prosecuted for second-degree murder, she said.

"Each case must be looked at indevidually," she said. "You have to put all
those facts together and see if the case passes."

Some civil rights attorneys disagree.

"What they are trying to do is impose their constitutional will on people
who have babies (using) a statute that has nothing to do with (involuntary
manslaughter)," Connolly said.

Connolly said women have a right to breast-feed.

Under constitutional law, the state would have to draft a statute that says
women who take drugs and breast-feed their children are criminally liable
for their deaths before a mother could be prosecuted, he said.

There are no such laws on the books in any state, he said.

"There are no such laws on the books in any state, he said. "The worst
thing they can do is prosecute," he said. "It will discourage prenatal
health care for mothers who are pregnant. It will encourage abortions."

But Henderson said if a mother knows something is dangerous and does it
anyway, she deserves to be punished.

"It's not about interfering with a woman's right to do this or that," she
said. "Nothing is set in stone."