Pubdate: Mon, 10 Jul 2006
Source: News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)
Copyright: 2006 The News and Observer Publishing Company
Contact: http://www.newsobserver.com/484/story/433256.html
Website: http://www.news-observer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/304
Author: Rick Montgomery, McClatchy Newspapers
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/meth.htm (Methamphetamine)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/women.htm (Women)

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.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman