The Charleston policy became effective in late 1989, a time when there was a tremendous amount of national attention directed toward protecting children from exposure to crack cocaine in utero. If the program had been brought to the institutional review board or to the hospital ethics committee, there would have been questions raised, and issues that they had overlooked would have come to light. They might very well have ended up with a program that was much more acceptable. In contrast, Adrienne Asch, PhD, Henry R. Luce professor of biology, ethics and the politics of human reproduction at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, said the policy had no redeeming features. If the goal was to solve the drug problem of pregnant women, MUSC simply should have helped them to get drug free.
Many ethical dilemmas are dilemmas.
This is not a dilemma. Seven of the 10 plaintiffs in the present case were arrested after their children were born, and 29 of the 30 women arrested under the policy were African-American. Robert Hood, attorney for the city of Charleston, and MUSC officials and caregivers who developed the policy, declined to elaborate on the case. Back to top.