In that small rural district about an hour’s drive from Birmingham, police, prosecutors, and judges in Etowah County, Alabama have been arresting pregnant women for marijuana and other drugs—and then keeping them jailed indefinitely.
Several pregnant women and new moms accused of exposing their fetuses to drugs have been held for weeks or months inside the Etowah County Detention Center, under special bond conditions that require rehab and $10,000 cash.
Some women are trapped in a Catch-22: Prosecutors and judges assume those arrested for low-level offenses like marijuana possession are drug addicts, so they order them into rehab. But rehab facilities will only take patients with actual substance abuse disorders—not adults who happened to get caught with a little weed on them.