A year ago, when Tennessee passed a bill allowing women to be charged with assault if they use narcotics while pregnant, health advocates warned that the law would deter women from seeking vital medical care out of fear of being prosecuted. Their concerns are now coming true.
“We are getting lots of anecdotal information about women not seeking critical prenatal care, and avoiding going to the hospital to give birth, because they are scared of being arrested and having their baby taken away,” said Allison Glass, state director of Healthy and Free Tennessee, a nonprofit women’s advocacy group. “Not only does the current law do nothing to help those who may, in fact, need treatment, but it’s actually having a negative public health impact.”
The controversial law, which went into effect in July 2014 despite vocal opposition from leading medical groups, was passed in response to Tennessee’s growing opioid epidemic. Over the past 10 years, the state has seen a nearly tenfold rise in the incidence of babies born with “neonatal abstinence syndrome” (NAS), a group of symptoms that can occur when babies are in withdrawal from exposure to narcotics.
Babies with NAS may be irritable, have trouble feeding and sleeping or suffer from vomiting and diarrhea, but medical professionals stress that the condition is treatable and hasn’t been associated with any long-term negative consequences.
Critics of the Tennessee law contend that incarcerating mothers and separating them from their babies leads to far more severe health outcomes than NAS, and that it flies in the face of medical consensus.
On Friday, national and international experts on NAS, public health researchers, clinicians, reproductive health advocates and drug treatment professionals are descending on Tennessee to try and convince the state of just that.
A two-day national symposium on pregnancy and neonatal abstinence syndrome is being held in Nashville. The location of the event is no coincidence: As the only state in the country thus far to explicitly criminalize drug use during pregnancy, Tennessee has become ground zero in the debate over how to treat pregnant women who struggle with addiction. (continue reading)