Bianca Green was born in February suffering from severe oxygen deprivation, and died two days later. Hospital authorities in Rockford, Ill., soon found signs of what they believed was the cause of death: cocaine in the baby's urine, as well as in the bloodstream of her 24-year-old mother Melanie. Last week local law-enforcement officials arrested Melanie Green and charged her with involuntary manslaughter and supplying drugs to a minor.
Such actions are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. With the rising number of babies exposed to drugs before birth, prosecutors around the country are seeking to punish women who harm their fetuses by taking illegal substances. Examples:
-- When Casandra Gethers of Hollywood, Fla., gave birth to her second cocaine- addicted infant, she was arrested in February and charged with child abuse. Her baby was placed in foster care.
-- Arrested for forging $800 worth of checks last year, Brenda Vaughan of Washington was given a drug test that revealed cocaine use. Since she was a first-time offender and a mother-to-be, a lenient prosecutor merely recommended probation. Instead, the judge sent Vaughan to jail for nearly four months in order to protect the fetus. The baby was born healthy.
-- Pamela Rae Stewart spent a week in a San Diego jail in 1986 on charges that she had failed to provide for her baby by defying her doctor's advice to stop using street drugs during pregnancy. Stewart's child was born brain damaged and died six weeks later. The charges were eventually dropped.
Advocates of legal intervention point to the tragic consequences of drug taking during pregnancy. Experts estimate that 375,000 newborns a year have been exposed to illegal drugs, frequently cocaine. Cocaine babies, as they are called, are more likely to be born prematurely or to die before birth. They tend to be abnormally small and face an increased risk of deformities or crib death. Moreover, there are strong indications that all these babies suffer some form of neurological damage. Says Darron Castiglione, supervisor of the child-abuse division of the Hollywood, Fla., police department: "These infants don't have a chance in life. They will never be right, never be whole people, through no fault of their own. These babies can only blame the mother."
That approach, however, has raised the ire of many legal experts and women's rights groups. "These cases are attacks on women," says Lynn Paltrow of the A.C.L.U.'s Reproductive Freedom Project. "If states pass laws that make maternal behavior a crime against the fetus, and if the state can create prenatal police patrols for cocaine use, then where would they draw the line?" Opponents note that alcohol use, smoking and other kinds of maternal conduct have also been shown to damage fetuses. Says Paltrow: "For some women, standing on their feet all day is harmful. Will they arrest them too?"