Parental Drugs
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Criminalization of Prenatal child abuse Drug/alcohol use, prenatal care
Maternal drug abuse is part of an ongoing array of familial, cultural, and social institutional process within which the child is nested and in which the growing child participates (Claussen, Scott, Mundy, & Kratz, 2004). In the case of child abuse, women have become the main targets in the legal system dealing with prenatal care. There are many factors that affect in fetuses or childrens health during and after pregnancy. With lack of support from the government women are forced to find places to get help for them and their child. As a result of these costs, many prosecutors see pregnant women as child abusers. Their justification is that making prenatal drug exposure a crime would ultimately protect the health and well-being of infants (Zivi, 2000). In the past decade prosecutors have charged more than 200 women with crimes for prenatal drug exposure (Chavkin et al. 1998 cited in Zivi, 2000). Even the welfare advocates are promoting unfounded interpretations of civil child abuse and neglect laws to permit the removal of hundreds of children from their mother, not because of evidence that the mothers will not properly care for their children, but rather because a single drug test indicates that a women used drugs once during pregnancy (Paltrow, 1991). Its tough for a mother to receive help with pregnancy because of the risk of losing
their baby. Therefore, causes mother not to receive help from drug treatment programs.
There is also poverty. The poverty of black women who are drug users brings them in closer contact with government agencies [where] there drug use is more likely to be detected (Zivi, 2000). Drug use is higher among women who have not finish school and among those who are poorer (Classen, Scott, Mundy & Kratz).
The majority of prenatal drug exposure is in the inner city. Many could come to the conclusion that black women will be the main target for prosecutors and legislators. This reveals the racial bias that criminalizes women for having babies. Law enforcement official believes arresting pregnant women will protect the fetus and advance children health, while other begged the different. Like the American Medical Association and many other have looked at a different approach. They have concluded that problems of alcohol and drug use during pregnancy is a health issue, it is best through education and community- based family treatment, not through criminal justice system (Ehrlich & Paltrow, 2006).
It is much harder for women to report to physicians for help when they are using drugs. Most physicians are privately owned and would not treat patients that use drugs. Also, children are looked at as social benefits and than used as basis to justify to most social policies. In response, policy makers have turned to such policies as birth control, welfare regulations, and criminalization as part of an effort to “monitor and restrain” the “corrupting tendency of black motherhood” (Zivi, 2000 p. 252). Policy maker are threaten pregnant women with jail time and this causes them not to seek the little drug and alcohol treatment that might be available. Therefore, babies are being born in jail cell. This put the mother and child health at risk. Babies will be born in unsanitary conditions which causes infections (Ehrlich & Paltrow, 2006). Not only is the condition bad but women are restrain and shackle throughout pregnancy and during labor, even though international human rights law bans restraint under these circumstances (Ehrlich & Paltrow, 2006).
These punishments violate womens constitutional rights. The 14th amendment states a right of
personal privacy protected by the due process clause that includes a qualified right of a women to determine whether or not to bear a child. For women, this should be reproductive freedom. Freedom that protects women rights to bear a child. The values that are placed on women are determined whether they are fit to care for a child.
Instead of criminalizing women, the government should place more drug treatment programs that provide more prenatal care for women. Such programs would enable the development of sense of collective influence over the social conditions of ones life” (Zivi, 2000). Many drug using pregnant women do not have any type of medical insurance, therefore will not admit to using drugs because most program are privately owned and few drug treatment program that do accept patients using some type of Medicaid will not accept them. Because the national cost of medical care for substance addicted infants in 1990 alone was estimated to be $504 million, society is stuck with the end result of paying for health care for these addicted infants and children (Lester, Andre, & Appiah, 2004). Paltrow (2000) reported that drug treatment programs simply feel that there are no benefits from treating pregnant women who cant afford prenatal care. Because of the decreasing access to abortion women have been denied the choice to decide whether to continue the pregnancy. The government has looked at the child or fetus separately from the women and as a result, failed to provide the services which could bring comfort for both the mother and the child. Many of these women grew up in homes with alcoholic or drug addicted family members. “Drug abuse for these women is not a self-indulgent pastime, but rather a form of self medication in lives filled with pain and abuse (Paltrow, 2000 p. 86)”.
The media plays a large role in stereotyping prenatal drug exposure. The media charged drug use in pregnancy to the problem of crack cocaine. The media in its “Claims-making role” did more than simply bring the general “crack crisis” and, more specifically,