Yesterday ABC News reported that the first woman has been charged under a new Tennessee law with assaulting her unborn child by means of prenatal drug use.
“The law, which just went into effect earlier this month, allows a woman to be “prosecuted for assault for the illegal use of a narcotic drug while pregnant” if her infant is harmed or addicted to the drug.”
The 26-year-old woman admitted to smoking meth just days before giving birth, both she and her child tested positive for meth.
Though the Monroe County Sheriff’s office hoped that the arrest would deter other pregnant women from drug use and cause them to seek help for their addiction instead, the law has been hotly contested for various reasons. The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee is pursuing suit against the law due to the fear that it might prevent pregnant women with addictions from seeking help.
Although the law allows anyone charged with the misdemeanor to use entrance into a treatment program before birth and graduation from a treatment afterward as defense, the White House still spoke up, disagreeing with the law.
Just before Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed the bill in April, Michael Botticelli, acting director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy at the time, said the federal government didn’t want to “criminalize” addiction.
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“What’s important is that we create environments where we’re really diminishing the stigma and the barriers, particularly for pregnant women, who often have a lot of shame and guilt about their substance abuse disorders,” Botticelli said, according to The Nashville Tennessean. “We know that it’s usually a much more effective treatment and less costly to our taxpayers if we make sure that we’re treating folks.”
I’m no director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, but I can’t imagine for the life of me that “diminishing the stigma and the barriers” for drug use in America, especially in pregnant women is the ideal solution. You can’t use drugs without understanding they are illegal and dangerous, it’s become impossible. If you don’t learn it in school you learn it from having to sneak around to meet your drug dealer, or by observing the lives of other drug users. The first step to complete and utter lawlessness is to remove accountability for actions that harm others. If we have laws saying individuals cannot use drugs, but we never charge drug users with their crimes the law is utterly useless.
If you are found possessing illicit materials, you are arrested and charged with a crime. If you are caught selling drugs, you are arrested and charged with a crime. If you provide drugs to a minor you are arrested and charged with a crime. The only reason why the White House doesn’t want to “criminalize” prenatal drug use is because they don’t want to have to admit that it causes harm to an unborn child. They don’t want to have to admit that a drug addicted mother makes a drug addicted baby. They don’t want to have to admit that prenatal drug use causes harm to the baby before and after birth because then they have to admit continuity of life inside and outside of the womb. The White House opposes this law only because it protects an unborn child from harm.
The Executive Office is so deliriously frenetic to make America believe “abortion is health care” that they have completely jumped off the deep end. Not only do they want you to abort your child or to pay for someone else to abort theirs, now they won’t even employ barriers to discourage women from participating in activities which directly harm their child–whether they want an abortion or not. Not only is it okay to kill your unborn child, now you can abuse it too.
The pro-life movement is constantly accused of caring more about unborn babies than their mothers, but the American government is so obsessed with abortion and maintaining their delusion that a baby in the womb is nothing more than a clump of cells that they would rather keep women hopelessly addicted to drugs than create a law which might possibly help an unborn child.
Abortion and abortion culture only produces death and decay in every area of life. If we call evil good and good evil, our perception becomes clouded with impenetrable darkness and confusion. If we can’t recognize that a child in the womb is a human person, we have crossed the ultimate boundary and everything is skewed. If we can’t understand that a baby is worthy of protection then there is no boundary or law which can protect the rest of us from the intentions of darkened minds. The most basic and preeminent law of humanity is the right to life; once we have broken this law the others will follow. It’s only a matter of time.
LifeNews Note: Stacie Kuhns writes for the Bound4Life blog.
