Is prenatal drug abuse also child abuse?

Top court asked to take up issue

marijuana, and that her infant spent 19 days at the hospital being treated for withdrawal symptoms. CYS took custody of the baby, accusing the mother of child abuse under Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services The PennsylvaniaLaw. Supreme Court has been In the ensuing legal battle, asked to decide whether the baby’s parents won the drug abuse during pregnancy first round. Clinton County can be punished as Common Pleas Court concluded child abuse under state law. there was no abuse

That issue, which has because the mother’s actions torn American law and politics affected her fetus and since the crack epidemic the law does not consider a of the 1980s, is stirring renewed fetus to be a child. debate as the opioid On appeal to state Superior crisis spawns another generation Court, CYS argued that of newborns hooked on the mother knew her baby their mothers’ drugs. would suffer through withdrawal

The case in question, In after birth. A threejudge the Interest of L.J.B., involves panel ruled that her illegal a woman who gave drug use might constitute birth in February 2017 at child abuse under the Williamsport Hospital. Clinton law “if it is established the County Children and mother intentionally, knowingly, Youth Services alleged she or recklessly caused tested positive for opiates, or created a reasonable likelihood benzodiazepines (antianxiety of bodily injury to a drugs that can heighten child after birth.” They sent the effect of opiates) and the case back to the lower Philadelphia Inquirer court for further proceedings.

Two of the Superior Court judges, however, added a separate opinion that urged the state Supreme Court to review it.

Punishing drug abuse as child abuse, the two judges warned, could deter women from getting prenatal care and drug rehabilitation, break up families, and open the door to penalizing many other choices during pregnancy.

“Should she travel to countries where the Zika virus is present? Should she obtain cancer treatment even though it could put her child at risk?” wrote Superior Court Judge Eugene B. Strassburger. “I question whether treating as child abusers women who are addicted to drugs results in safer outcomes for children.”

Late last month, the mother’s attorneys — including Drexel University law professor David Cohen and Carol Tracy of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia — formally petitioned the state’s high court to take up the case. There is no time frame for the court to reply.

“Our position is that actions taken while pregnant are not what the state statute is supposed to cover,” Mr. Cohen said in an interview. “That’s not what the Legislature intended, and it would raise serious constitutional issues.”

Lawyers for CYS declined to comment.

The severity of newborn drug withdrawal varies. The symptoms — including inconsolable crying, tremors, vomiting, diarrhea — are usuallytreated with decreasing doses of oral morphine or methadone, both opioid medicines. Studies of the long-term effects of withdrawal on health and development are inconclusive, and many findings are hard to distinguish from the effects of poverty.

The federal child abuse law, and most state child abuse statutes, are designed to help — not punish — women in addiction by identifying them when they give birth and connecting them to social services.

In their petition, the mother’s lawyers point out that several Pennsylvania state senators introduced a bill in 2011 to explicitly include drug use by pregnant women as child abuse, but the proposal never got beyond the Senate Committee on Aging and Youth.

The petition also notes that professional societies, including the National Perinatal Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, oppose punitive approaches. “Seeking obstetric-gynecologic care should not expose a woman to criminal or civil penalties, such as incarceration, involuntary commitment, loss of custody of her children, or loss of housing,” the ob-gyn group said.