This report, Year 2000 Overview: Governmental Responses to Pregnant Women Who Use Alcohol or Other Drugs, surveys the nation and provides a comprehensive review of every state and federal law specifically touching on the issue of pregnant women's drug use.
Pregnancy Justice's Work
Read About All of Our Legal Advocacy, Public Education, and Organizing Work
Punishment and Prejudice: Judging Drug-Using Pregnant Women
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Throughout the late 1980's and still today, "crack moms" and "crack babies" are the subject of vigorous public debate. Much of this public discussion has been governed by speculation and medical misinformation reported as fact in both medical journals and in the popular press and has been extremely judgmental and punitive in many instances.
Pregnant Drug Users, Fetal Persons and the Threat to Roe v. Wade
January 13, 1999
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By: Lynn Paltrow, 62 Albany Law Review 999 (1999)
Roe v. Wade marked only the beginning of the struggle for reproductive justice for all women. Many women fall outside of its "core" protections. Among these are drug addicted pregnant women.
Criminal Prosecutions Against Pregnant Women: National Update and Overview
January 31, 1992
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This documents the cases of an estimated 167 women who have been arrested on criminal charges because of their behavior during pregnancy or because they became pregnant while addicted to drugs. The cases are from twenty-four states.
The Rights of Pregnant Patients: Carder Case Brings Bold Policy Initiatives
Carder Case Brings Bold Policy Initiatives
HealthSpan, Volume 8, Number 5, 1991
By Terry E. Thornton and Lynn Paltrow
When George Washington University Medical Center ("GWUMC") recently developed and adopted groundbreaking policies concerning the rights of pregnant patients to make health care decisions without court intervention, it not only reversed its position on the appropriateness of court-ordered medical care,' but resolved three years of daunting litigation against it for having subjected 27-year-old Angela Carder to a life threatening court-ordered Caesarean section in June 1987.1
Along the way, the Angela Carder case resulted in the only appellate decision in the country to address, on a fully developed legal record, a hospital's duty to its pregnant patients and the development of model hospital policies which protect the interests of both patient and institution alike.