Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1990
ISSN
0731-129X
Publisher
Taylor & Francis Group
Language
en-US
Abstract
In the war on drugs an offensive has been launched against pregnant women who use drugs. Over the past four years, prosecuting attorneys have been indicting women who use drugs while pregnant. In South Carolina alone, eighteen women who allegedly took drugs during pregnancy were indicted last summer for criminal neglect of a child or distribution of drugs to a minor.' In the only successful prosecution so far, Jennifer Johnson was convicted in Florida for delivering illegal drugs to a minor via the umbilical cord in the moment after her child was born and before the cord was clamped.2 No one seriously maintains that the transitory "delivery" was the conduct on trial. Rather, the crime was the mother's use of illegal drugs during pregnancy. But the indictment contorted the statute's prohibition against drug "delivery" to characterize as criminal the kind of conduct that could not have been considered within its scope by the enacting legislature.
Recommended Citation
Wendy K. Mariner, Leonard H. Glantz & George J. Annas,
Pregnancy, Drugs, and the Perils of Prosecution
,
9
Criminal Justice Ethics
30
(1990).
Available at:
https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/0731129X.1990.9991870
Comments
Reprinted with permission in: Monk RC, ed. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Controversial Issues in Crime and Criminology, 2d ed., 284, Guilford. CN: Dushkin Publishing, 1991.