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Tennessee becomes first state to put mothers in jail for actions harming the fetus.

Courtesy of Salon:

Tennessee has become the first state in the nation to pass a law criminalizing women for their pregnancy outcomes. Republican Gov. Bill Haslam took the 10 days allotted to him to consider the advice of doctors, addiction experts and reproductive health groups urging him to veto the punitive and dangerous measure that allows prosecutors to charge a woman with criminal assault if she uses illegal drugs during her pregnancy and her fetus or newborn is considered harmed as a result. Haslam ignored these recommendations — and the recommendations of nearly every major medical association, including the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy — and signed the measure anyway.

Opponents of the new law share a concern that a lack of access to health care and treatment facilities will result in the disproportionate targeting and jailing of poor mothers and mothers of color, particularly in rural districts throughout the state.

Republican state Sen. Mike Bell, one of the seven Republicans in the state Senate to vote against the measure (every Democrat in the state Senate voted in favor), recently told Salon that this lack of access is a problem he thinks will hurt the women of his district and their families. “I represent a rural district,” he said. “There’s no treatment facility for these women there, and it would be a substantial drive for a woman caught in one of these situations to go to an approved treatment facility. Looking at the map of the state, there are several areas where this is going to be a problem.”

Only two of the state’s 177 addiction treatment facilities that provide on-site prenatal care allow older children to stay with their mothers while they are undergoing treatment. And only 19 of these facilities offer any addiction care specifically oriented toward pregnant women. Tennessee has also refused the Medicaid expansion, leaving many women without reliable access to basic medical or prenatal care, much less drug treatment.

The law does nothing to expand treatment options for women in Tennessee, a fact that did not seem to trouble Republican state Rep. Terri Lynn Weaver, who sponsored the House version of the bill and remains one of its most vocal defenders. “I don’t know what to say about [how] some [women] have insurance and some do not,” she recently told Salon. “It’s a terrible thing, but I don’t want to get into that because that’s another subject.”

This is one of those laws that almost feels like the right thing to do, but once you consider the possible ramifications it becomes immediately clear that it certainly it NOT.

I personally work with children born with FAS, or coke addicted, and I can certainly testify to my anger at their mothers fro being so uncaring and irresponsible that they condemned their children to a lifetime of suffering.

However this law is guaranteed to keep expectant mothers, who desperately need prenatal care, away from physicians and health care workers who could identify potential problems with the pregnancy, or even provide nutritional advice.

And of course this opens the door for more stringent laws in Tennessee's future that will almost certainly further restrict a woman's right to choose.

Because if you don't think that this is ultimately about abortion then you certainly don't understand Republican politics.

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