If the goal is to protect fetuses and to help women become drug-free mothers, punitive measures have the opposite effect. The punitive approach to drug use during pregnancy also stops women from participating in drug-treatment programs. Following the publicity surrounding this case, two drug-treatment programs in Columbia, SC, reported a precipitous drop in the number of pregnant women entering their facilities. Recognizing that criminalizing maternal drug use is bad medicine and bad public policy, with potentially tragic consequences for pregnant women, their fetuses, and their families, numerous medical and public-health organizations have denounced the practice. These include the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, the American Medical Women's Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Public Health Association, the American Nurses Association, the American Society on Addiction Medicine, the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, the National Association of Social Workers, and the March of Dimes, among other prominent groups.
Pregnant women enjoy the same constitutional rights as other competent adults.
Pregnant women have as great a right to privacy, bodily integrity, and autonomy as other free adults. This means that the state cannot subject women to warrantless, suspicionless, nonconsensual searches just because they are pregnant. MUSC's drug testing policy did just that. Imagine if the tides were turned, and the state began testing men of child-bearing age for illegal drug use because they did not have annual physicals or had a history of substance abuse. Imagine further that officials arrest and take into custody in the name of their unborn children those men with positive toxicology reports.