For months, pregnant women in the the state of Alabama are being arrested for smoking cannabis. Earlier this year, the story behind a 23-year-old woman has taken the spotlight, highlighting the controversy behind the state’s laws.
The Charge For Drug Use On Your First Day of Pregnancy
Ashley Banks, the young woman from Gadsden, Alabama involved in this case, was taken into custody in May “with a small amount of marijuana and a pistol without a permit to carry,” according to AL.com.
Usually, under Alabama law, Banks would have been able to post bail until her criminal trial. However, “she admitted to smoking pot on the same day she found out she was pregnant – two days before her arrest. In Etowah County, that meant she couldn’t leave jail unless she entered drug rehab, leaving her in limbo for three months.” Anyone in Etowah who is pregnant and charged with endangering their fetus by consuming drugs are required to remain in jail until they complete a drug assessment program. These programs are given without any consideration on how that may affect the health of the mother and child. Over the course of three months, Banks endured a high risk pregnancy, including “severe vaginal bleeding and two emergency room visits,” according to the Washington Post.
Pregnancy Criminalization Continues After Birth
Banks is among many women who have been subjected to poor treatment. In another case, The Guardian reports on Hali Burns, who was also taken to the Etowah county jail, however, this was “just six days after giving birth to her son, with police saying that she had tested positive for a drug used by pregnant women with opioid addictions to help manage cravings and withdrawal.” Even after giving birth, Burns was charged for taking drugs used to curve the withdrawal of other drugs. Her situation seemed to be futile with no winning solution.
“When she was thrown in jail, Burns was still physically recovering from giving birth. But the jail had no facilities for her to pump or tend to her wounds. Her partner tried to bring pads and underwear to her, so that she wouldn’t have to bleed into her clothes, but Etowah county authorities wouldn’t let her have them. The risk for infection was great – the indignity was even greater,” The Guardian reported.
Women’s Health is at Risk in Etowah County
Etowah County has been deemed the “ground zero for pregnancy criminalization” as quoted from The Washington post when described by the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a legal nonprofit organization. Over the past decade, over 150 cases have taken place in the county where pregnant women are jailed for drug use.
“The prosecution’s alleged justification for this is that this is needed to protect the women’s ‘unborn’ and born children,” said Emma Roth, a staff attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women. “When the reality is: This puts the health and well-being of these women at risk.”
With the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, The Guardian speculates that conditions in Alabama may worsen. “The policy in place in Etowah county and elsewhere reveals the warped logic and hateful absurdities of the anti-choice worldview. The movement claims to see embryos and fetuses as persons, and in practice they speak as if these “persons” are not women’s equals, but their superiors: the fetus is conceived of as more important than the woman, more worthy, less tainted by those things that make a pregnant woman so unappealing – her femaleness, her sexuality, her tendency to have human desires and human struggles, like irritation or addiction or anger. In the service of protecting and advancing this superior being of the fetus, the anti-choice movement claims, it is justifiable, even necessary, to steal the freedom of those lesser women.”
