After lecture on 'fetal rights'
South Carolina jails poor Black women for 'risky
behavior'
By Kathy
Durkin
Regina McKnight, a 24-year-old African American, was
sentenced on May 16 to 12 years in prison. The South Carolina
jury that found her guilty of "homicide by child abuse" had
deliberated for only 15 minutes. Her crime was that she had
given birth to a stillborn child in 1999.
McKnight suffered from substance use. She also faced
homelessness, domestic abuse, and being developmentally
disabled, but no government agency had ever helped her. She
needed but was never offered counseling, job training and
drug treatment.
The only action government officials took was
punitive.
McKnight is the first person in U.S. history to be
convicted of homicide for using drugs while pregnant. She
faces the longest term ever given a woman for "harming a
fetus through drug use."
During her trial, medical experts for the defense
testified they did not think that drug use was responsible
for the infant's death.
Yet McKnight was prosecuted under a South Carolina
statute--the only one in the country--that maintains that "a
fetus is a person" and mandates that pregnant women who show
any behavior that could pose a risk to a fetus be prosecuted
for child abuse.
Poor women victimized
by 'fetal rights' campaign
This law is part of a "fetal rights" campaign being
promoted by right-wing forces nationwide to erode women's
reproductive rights. In South Carolina it has been used
primarily as a weapon against young, poor and African
American women, whom racist prosecutors see as easiest to
convict.
South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon is a
fervent anti-choice proponent and the Republican candidate
for governor. He designed "fetal rights" laws that would
criminalize pregnant women for their behavior.
"McKnight was sentenced because she is poor, African
American, and having children," states Wyndi Anderson,
director of the South Carolina Advocates for Pregnant
Women.
Anderson says, "Today, South Carolina is the only state
that treats pregnant women with drug problems as child
abusers, and sends them to jail rather than to treatment.
This uniquely punitive state policy was first introduced and
applied to African American women who were taken out of their
hospital beds in chains and shackles.
"The policy's greatest advocate is Charlie Condon, South
Carolina's current Attorney General, who also staunchly
defends the state's policy of flying the Confederate flag. We
believe that it is no coincidence that the only state that
continues to fly the Confederate flag is also the only state
that jails African American women who continue their
pregnancies despite drug problems."
The state's vindictive, racist policy goes back several
years.
Began a decade ago
In the early 1990s, prosecutors began to zealously arrest
African American women who went to public hospitals for
health care after the state gave new meanings to the "child
neglect" laws, mandating that it was now a criminal offense
for a woman to fail "to provide proper medical care for her
unborn child."
In 1992, Cornelia Whitner, a young pregnant African
American woman, was arrested and charged with child abuse and
neglect. She was never offered counseling or treatment
instead of prison for substance abuse. At that time there
were no residential drug treatment programs in the state for
pregnant women.
Although Whitner requested such medical treatment from the
court, it was denied. The judge said, "I think I'll just let
her go to jail," and sentenced her to eight years in
prison.
Whitner's son was born healthy, but she was jailed
nevertheless. She is still incarcerated.
In 1997, South Carolina officials used Whitner's case to
codify existing "fetal rights" policies. The State Supreme
Court decided in Whitner v. South Carolina that a viable
fetus is a "person" under the Children's Code and that child
neglect laws could reach women whose behavior might endanger
the fetus.
These laws signaled an escalation of the state's war on
poor, pregnant women.
Imprisoned for 'risky behavior'
South Carolina became the first and only state where
pregnant women could be imprisoned for any behavior deemed as
risky to the fetus. This could encompass smoking, drinking,
diet and more; it was left open to interpretation.
When this ruling became law, Melissa Crawley, an African
American woman who was drug-free and rearing three children
at home, was re-imprisoned on a five-year sentence.
Although 17 states have passed laws enabling the state to
remove children of pregnant women who test positive for
drugs, South Carolina is the only state to extend criminal
child-abuse laws to cover fetuses, mandating that drug-using
pregnant women can be prosecuted and sent to jail for as long
as 10 years.
Many women, mainly poor and nearly all African American,
have been arrested, with no drug treatment. The law actually
dissuades pregnant women from seeking prenatal care or drug
treatment because they are afraid of being arrested and
jailed. Those who seek help to curtail substance use are
turned over to the criminal justice system.
For years, pregnant women were not admitted to drug
treatment programs. Today, South Carolina spends very little
money on drug treatment for women; there is always a shortage
of facilities for those who are pregnant. Budget and
healthcare funding cutbacks have resulted in fewer
facilities; often pregnant women are excluded or are required
to give up custody of their children to be treated.
Those suffering from domestic abuse find many battered
women's shelters don't accept women with drug problems.
Often, they can't obtain prenatal care for fear of losing
custody of their children.
The welfare reform act signed into law by President Bill
Clinton is now pushing poor women over the edge.
Dragged in chains
from their hospital beds
In October 1989, the Medical University Hospital in South
Carolina (MUSC), the only hospital in Charleston to treat
low-income, Medicaid and mostly African-American patients,
began to subject pregnant women to nonconsensual drug tests
in collusion with police and prosecutors. Racist staff turned
women over to the police and held them against their
will.
All but one of the 30 women arrested under this five-year
policy were African American; many were taken to jail in
chains and shackles straight from hospital beds, some still
pregnant, others having just given birth.
National pressure and threats of a federal investigation
stopped this policy, but then-Solicitor General Charlie
Condon and the hospital defended their methods in the federal
courts against a lawsuit brought by 10 women arrested at
MUSC. In Ferguson vs. the City of Charleston, 70 medical,
public health and civil rights organizations filed amicus
briefs in their behalf to the U.S. Supreme Court. In March of
this year the women won their lawsuit.
The state of South Carolina spent millions of dollars
defending this racist and inhumane policy instead of funding
needed drug treatment programs.
Blaming poor women also lets the government off the hook
for the lack of social programs. Officials say nothing about
poverty or cutbacks in health care or services being harmful
to pregnant women and their children.
South Carolina ranks among the worst states in infant
mortality, low birth-weight babies, prenatal care, funds for
education and number of children in poverty.
Letters to demand Regina McKnight be freed and all charges
against her be dropped can be sent to Gov. Jim Hodges, P.O.
Box 11829, Columbia, SC 29211 or at
governor@govoepp.state.sc.us.
Thanks to the South Carolina Advocates for Pregnant
Women for much of the information in this article.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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