When she went into labor in late 2014, Brittany Hudson couldn’t go to the hospital. The 24 year-old east Tennessee native had been abusing prescription drugs for years and knew that, under a new state law, if her baby was born showing signs of her drug use, Hudson could be sent to jail. That was the reason she’d forgone prenatal care for most of her pregnancy. Hudson was already in labor when she went with a friend to see a midwife, but it was too late. She gave birth to her daughter in the backseat of her friend’s car on the side of the road, where her friend cleaned her up after. Then she turned around and went home.
“I was afraid I was going to have my baby, and they were going to take her,” Hudson told Mother Jones. “I wanted a chance to be a mom.”
Hudson didn’t have much time alone with her new daughter. Someone reported her to law enforcement, and just days after giving birth, she was contacted by police who asked her to check in at the hospital, where her newborn, Braylee, went into withdrawal. Almost a week later, while Braylee was still in intensive care, Hudson was arrested, charged with assault, and jailed.
Hudson was charged under Tennessee’s new fetal assault statute, passed in the spring of 2014 as part of a push to combat an opioid addiction epidemic in the state. The newly revised measure, which is the first law of its kind in the nation, allows the state to prosecute women for illegally using narcotics while pregnant, if the child is born “addicted to or harmed by” the drugs. Courts in Alabama and South Carolina have upheld the prosecution of women for drug use while pregnant, but Tennessee was the first to codify this practice with a state law.
Since it took effect two years ago, an estimated 100 women have been arrested under the law, most for using opiates like prescription painkillers and heroin, and there are four known cases where women are serving six month sentences. At least one woman was arrested for using methamphetamine, a drug not covered by the law. And, because of what advocates in the state say is a major pitfall of the law, pregnant women can be arrested and charged with fetal assault for all illegal behavior. For example, a pregnant woman in her ninth month was arrested in 2014 for “engaging in conduct which placed her baby in eminent danger or death or serious bodily injury,” according to the warrant. What did she do? Drove without a seatbelt. As a result of this law, women have avoided prenatal care and many avoid getting treatment for their drug use because they are afraid they’ll be arrested. After the law’s passage in 2014, the number of Tennessee babies affected by drugs who received no prenatal care skyrocketed.
As a result of this law, women have avoided prenatal care and many avoid getting treatment for drug use because they are afraid they’ll be arrested.
But the 2014 fetal assault law contains a sunset provision, and so (continue reading)