The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Dear Friends and Allies:

NAPW (National Advocates for Pregnant Women) is facing a crush of new prosecutions and child welfare interventions based on a woman's conditions, circumstances and actions during pregnancy. We suspect that these new cases reflect the impact the passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act and similar laws have had in emboldening prosecutors around the country. There are also many new child welfare interventions relating to pregnancy and drug use including a case in Connecticut where a child was removed from her mother’s custody because the mother was receiving methadone treatment. With our allies at the Drug Policy Alliance and the New York Civil Liberties Union we are working hard to meet the many new and frightening challenges. For example, with these allies, we recently filed public health amicus briefs in a Missouri case in which a woman who admitted to smoking marijuana once while pregnant is being prosecuted for criminal child abuse and in a Rochester case where a judge prohibited a woman from becoming pregnant unless and until she has the financial means to support and regain custody of her existing children. NAPW is also continuing our organizing and education efforts. To that end NAPW board member Dr. Robert Newman and I were both successful in getting letters to the editor published. These letters responded to a terrible Newsday story that revived and rehashed myths and misinformation about pregnancy and drug use. We sent out a call to our allies to write letters to the editor. Many people wrote and we believe the strong and prompt response put pressure on the paper to publish at least two of them – and on different days – extending the impact. We have much more to report on in terms of local and national organizing, significant new collaborations, and some important steps forward in our efforts to redirect debate from discussions of personal blame to broader social justice issues. For now though please find the letters we mentioned pasted below.
Sincerely,

Lynn M. Paltrow

Newsday (New York)
October 23, 2004 Saturday

Real villain

Regarding "A life short and hard" [News, Oct. 17]: The death of a young child is always a catastrophe. Your article, however, does a disservice to both child and mother by giving credence to the family's unsupported conclusion that drug use during pregnancy caused this tragedy.

You do finally get around to citing authoritative research that indicates the relationship between illicit maternal drug use and fatal consequences for babies is "more myth than medical reality." By then, however, most readers will have joined the family in pointing an accusing finger at the mother's alleged crack use, and ignore poverty, use of legal drugs like cigarettes and alcohol, inadequate nutrition, housing and access to health care, and a host of other possible causes of conditions such as this child experienced.

Robert Newman

Editor's note: The writer is director of Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center.

Newsday (New York)
October 24, 2004 Sunday

A tragic child

"A life short and hard" [News, Oct. 17] reports the tragic death of
5-year-old Xavier Morales. Rather than exploring the many serious underlying scientific and medical issues that are raised by this family's terrible loss, it instead focuses on the family's speculative supposition that the child's deceased mother and her drug problems during pregnancy were responsible for Xavier's death. An exploration of the far more likely causes of his death, the reasons why drug rehabilitation failed the mother, and what research tells us about successful interventions on behalf of pregnant drug users and their families would serve this newspaper's readers and the memory of Xavier Morales far more honorably.

Lynn M. Paltrow

Editor's note: The writer is executive director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

Copyright 2004 Newsday, Inc.