Tennessee has a new law that allows drug-addicted mothers to be charged with assault to a fetus if they refuse to get treatment. The measure has to be renewed next year. And supporters of the controversial statute want to see it strengthened, even as critics push for repeal.
Right now, the law only applies to narcotics like prescription pain pills, heroin and crack. Meth didn’t make it in.
“Meth is a very, very dangerous drug, and to leave meth out I just think is wrong,” says Sullivan County District Attorney Barry Staubus.
Staubus pushed for the law two years ago as a way to reduce the number of infants suffering from drug withdrawal in their first days of life. So far,
it hasn’t worked in lowering the instances of neonatal abstinence syndrome, though Staubus argues the law needs more time.
Just this year, he’s charged more than 20 women with assault to a fetus, though few have gone to jail.
Statewide, roughly 100 women have been prosecuted under the law, according to outside estimates. Most choose treatment instead of serving time for the misdemeanor. Staubus says the maximum penalty of a one-year sentence isn’t always enough to get an addict’s attention.
“Maybe with a mother who has a long history of doing this and being defiant, unwilling to get into a program, I think in those worst of worst cases, I think we ought to have the option to charge a felony charge,” he says.
The Tennessee legislature will have to make that call. And there will be pushback.
When the fetal assault law was first proposed, the charge was a felony, and legislators
walked it back in order to get the votes for passage. Uncertainty among lawmakers is also why the measure had a sunset provision.
The ACLU and women’s health groups are banding together to argue the law should be allowed to expire on its own. They say it’s unfair because only women can be charged, and it’s scaring some away from getting prenatal care.
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