A see of the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
This story was co-published along with AL.com.
Pregnant women and brand-new mothers using legally prescribed medications could no longer face prosecution under an Alabama statute that is the nation’s harshest law versus drug usage throughout pregnancy.
The Alabama Estate of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday to exempt women that usage medically prescribed drugs from the state’s chemical endangerment law, which makes it a felony to expose a kid to “a controlled substance, chemical substance, or drug paraphernalia.” The measure had cleared the Senate in April.
If signed by Republican Gov. Robert Bentley, it would certainly be the very first considerable adjustment to a controversial law that has actually been used to arrest and prosecute a lot more compared to 500 women over the past 10 years, including some that used drugs under a doctor’s care. Whether Bentley, a dermatologist, will certainly authorize the measure in to law wasn’t straightaway clear.
A ProPublica investigation along with AL.com last year exposed disparities in prosecution under Alabama’s chemical endangerment law, which was passed in 2006 and initially targeted parents that exposed kids to methamphetamine labs.
Prosecutors and courts, however, have actually extended the law to use to women that usage drugs throughout pregnancy. As written, the statue did not treat pregnancy. Nor did it consist of recommendations for police, prosecutors, doctors or hospitals, on exactly how to deal along with women that used prescription painkillers or various other medications.
As ProPublica and AL.com reported, numerous women have actually been turned in to authorities by hospitals that conducted drug examinations without explicit consent.
One of the women profiled was Hanna Ballenger, a Cullman County mother that was arrested in 2014 after her baby tested beneficial for methadone. The drug had been prescribed by her doctor and carefully monitored throughout her pregnancy. She was charged along with a Class B felony, carrying up to twenty years in prison, and lost custody of her son.
According to medical experts, a woman that stops using methadone or various other opiates throughout pregnancy risks having a miscarriage or a premature baby. As such, the standard of care is to go on the medication and handle the newborn for any type of withdrawal symptoms, a condition known as neonatal abstinence syndrome, or NAS.
Ballenger’s son, Case, was born along with NAS yet swiftly recovered. “I got charged for being on methadone, and he’s healthy,” Ballenger said last year. “yet if I had come off the methadone cold turkey, and he had died, they would certainly have actually arrested me for killing him. I would certainly have actually gotten charged either way.”
She eventually pleaded guilty in exchange for 5 years’ probation.
Under the bill, defendants such as Ballenger would certainly not face arrest and prosecution if they usage a controlled substance as directed by a medical provider, or if they have actually “an excellent faith belief” that their prescription was lawful.
“It’s merely to clarify the law,“ Among the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Clyde Chambliss, R-Montgomery, told AL.com. ”If a woman is taking a drug prescribed by a doctor, and it unintentionally induces harm to the fetus, she need to not be prosecuted.”
Steve Marshall, the district attorney of Marshall County and a leading proponent of using the chemical endangerment law to push addicted women in to treatment, expressed support for the measure.
“I believe it merely adopts our current technique and would certainly not adjustment anything we do here,” he said in an email. “I believe it is a reasonable amendment.”
Alabama is Among 3 states that permit women to be arrested and prosecuted for drug usage throughout pregnancy. It is the just state that has actually allowed such arrests from the earliest stages of pregnancy, also if babies are born unharmed.
A law in Tennessee that allowed drug-using mothers to be charged along with assault expired earlier this year.
The Chambliss bill, SB372, was Among two adjustments to the chemical endangerment law proposed by the Alabama healthiness Care Improvement Task Force. The group additionally suggested that every one of women arrested for drug usage throughout pregnancy very first receive court-ordered treatment as opposed to incarceration. That proposal is on hold.
Chambliss told AL.com that did not understand if Bentley would certainly authorize it. Since the bill was passed so late in the legislative session, the governor could allow it die devoid of his signature, known as a pocket veto. Dave White, Bentley’s healthiness policy adviser, said the measure had not yet been sent to the governor’s desk.
Farah Diaz-Tello, an attorney along with National Advocates for Pregnant Women, welcomed the bill yet said it was just a “half measure that is most likely to result in a doubling down on women that have actually not been using a prescription medication” — the majority arrested under the chemical endangerment statute.
“This is not going to solve the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes,” Diaz-Tello said.