Prosecutors abuse law to throw new moms in jail

January 8. A woman gives birth at a hospital in Andalusia, Alabama.

January 9. The same woman gets jailed for a felony. She remains behind bars over a month later.

The number of meth labs has skyrocketed since Bush seized power. This led to a 2006 law in Alabama dealing with chemical endangerment. The purpose of the law was to make it illegal for parents to expose their kids to meth lab toxins.

Maybe that was the purpose of the law, but it's had a side effect that has nothing to do with meth labs. Zealous prosecutors are misusing this law to test new mothers for drugs and throw them in jail based on the test results - even though the law does not allow this.

One factoid you hear nothing about from the pop-up media is that drug tests - like polygraphs - are sometimes wrong. The most common drug test is wrong 25 to 30% of the time. If lie detector tests aren't admissible in court for being wrong 10% of the time, how can drug tests be used as evidence when they're wrong 30% of the time? Yeah, I know: It's a "war" - the War on Drugs that's been a known failure since the days of golf tee car door locks.

Even if the test is accurate, and even if the results are positive, what good does imprisoning a new mother and giving her a felony record do? These prosecutions break up families and hurt children, and the very policy itself discourages expectant mothers from seeking prenatal care. Who wants to start their life with their mother being labeled a felon? What's the logic in taking a day-old infant away from their mother and not letting the mother see the baby again for at least a month?

There is none. I think the prosecutors know it. Granted, anyone who'd snort coke while they're pregnant isn't too wise. But even if the test comes back positive, there's a 30% chance that they didn't. Nope, I don't think the prosecutors are as interested in the children as they are about continuing the War on People. One prosecutor said the cases are settled once the mother agrees to go to treatment, but since 30% of the mothers affected aren't on drugs anyway, what good does that do for them? This is almost like the "dry druggie" concept the programmies love so much. I think the authorities are trying to find a stoner under every nook just to cover up their own failings - which is what the War on Drugs has done for decades.

In the Andalusia case, the new mother remains in jail under an outrageously high bond of $250,000.

The whole situation stinks, and it's wrong. If you want to talk about broken lives, such will be the result of the prosecutors' zeal.

Even if the statute let authorities test and imprison new mothers, it would still be illegal under a Supreme Court ruling - and it would violate patient confidentiality. In 2004, the court ruled that a hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, violated new moms' rights by testing them for drugs without their permission and giving the results to prosecutors.

But that doesn't stop authorities elsewhere from flouting the ruling. I've been told that in Delaware it's mandatory for mothers who go into premature labor to take a drug test. (However I can't find a specific cite.) A couple years ago, officials in a jurisdiction outside Cincinnati wanted to just test all new mothers. The tyranny of the proposal shone through the strident babblings of officials who touted the plan in TV news interviews.

The ruling party has a prison state to run, I guess. If a child loses their mother to the corrections-industrial complex, that's just fine and dandy with the regime.

(Source: http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/base/news/120298055632310.xml&coll=2&thispage=1;
http://www.cocaine.org/drugtestfaq/index.html)