Tennessee has attracted international attention for making it a crime to give birth to a drug-dependent baby. This means women addicted to pain pills or heroin can be charged with assault to a fetus.
After less than two years in effect, the controversial law must be renewed, or it will expire. While the measure has drawn worldwide disdain from women’s health and civil liberty advocates, some of the women who’ve been charged say the threat of jail-time was a wake-up call.
“If I didn’t go through what I went through, I’d probably be down that same road right now,” says 26-year-old mother Kim Walker of Johnson City. “But now I’m a totally different person. And I’m on the good road, not the bad road.”
Last year, Walker went into labor at home. It’s hard to know whether the drugs she was on had anything to do with this, but the baby came so quickly, she gave birth in her bathroom.
Walker tells the story like it was no big deal. “One push and he was out,” she says.
“My husband delivered him. Didn’t know he was drug exposed until we got to the hospital,” she says. “When we got to the hospital, they took him straight from my hospital room. I didn’t get to see him, didn’t get to hold him, nothing.”
He spent 28 days in the neonatal intensive care unit, withdrawing from the painkillers Walker was taking illegally.
Walker had to take a drug test, which she failed. Then she was charged with assault. But like most women, (continue reading)