Jacob Sullum on Arresting Women for Using Drugs During Pregnancy

Given the link between alcohol consumption during
pregnancy and birth defects, Jacob Sullum asks, should expectant
mothers who drink be arrested for assault? If not, Sullum says, it
is hard to see why Mallory Loyola was. 

Loyola, who was arrested last week after giving birth
to a baby girl who tested positive for amphetamine, is the first
person to be charged under a new Tennessee law that
criminalizes drug consumption by pregnant women. The law is
ostensibly aimed at protecting children. But Sullum says it is
really about punishing what a legislator called “the worst of
the worst”: women who not only consume arbitrarily proscribed
intoxicants but do so at a time when they are supposed to be
thinking only of their future babies.

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