An Alabama prosecutor is taking advantage of a new law to arrest mothers found to be using drugs while pregnant. "In my jurisdiction, a baby being born dead because of drug abuse is a huge deal," district attorney, Greg L. Gambril told The New York Times.
Mr. Gambril makes little distinction between fetus and child. He said his duty was to protect both - though the Alabama law he uses makes no reference to unborn children, and was primarily intended to protect youngsters from exposure to methamphetamine laboratories.
In the last 18 months, Gambril has charged eight women in the 37,000-person county with endangering their unborn babies through drug use, "a tally," The Times says, "without any recent parallel that women's advocates have been able to find."
The article emphasizes the county's rural, Southern culture. It says Maryland threw out two similar cases, while New Mexico's Supreme Court ruled a woman couldn't be charged with child abuse for using drugs while pregnant because the ...
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