In this case, a VM's refusal to sign a consent form for cesarean surgery led to hospital interventions and a report of abuse to child welfare authorities.

NAPW, along with Lawrence S. Lustberg and Jenny-Brooke Condon of Gibbons, P.C., and attorney Susan Jenkins, filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of 20 organizations and individual experts in the fields of maternal/health health and child welfare. Our brief argued that the trial court improperly considered Ms. M’s refusal to preauthorize cesarean surgery. While the decision predominately turned on other issues, the court reaffirmed the idea that a mother’s decision to refuse or delay a cesarean section has “no place” in a proceeding for the termination of parental rights.

We are pleased to hear that the New Jersey court found that J.M.G. “is entitled to the benefit of permanency with parents who hopefully will be in a position both physically and mentally to sustain her.” Nonetheless, we are concerned that the court noted her “combative behavior during delivery (excluding her refusal to consent to the c-section)” in determining that V.M. was not “in a proper mental state to safely care for J.M.G.” This parenthetical serves as a reminder that courts may not understand the range of emotional and psychological responses to the labor process. For instance, the court itself cites a clinician’s opinion that “it is not surprising that she panicked at the time of delivery . . . [after] being approached about the possibility of a Cesarean section” given her particular emotional vulnerability. We are celebrating a victory for V.M., B.G., and J.M.G., and are all the more motivated to ensure that women’s medical decision-making around childbirth is not a factor in child welfare cases.

Organizations and experts who signed on include: Howard Minkoff, M.D., Henci Goer, International Cesarean Awareness Network's (ICAN), Dr. Anne Lyerly, M.D., M.A., Dr. Lisa Harris, M.D., Dr. Marsden G. Wagner, M.D., Nicette Jukelevics, Dr. Elizabeth M. Armstrong, Ph.D., American Association of Birth Centers (AABC), American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM), The New Jersey Chapter of the American College of Nurse Midwives, The Big Push for Midwives Campaign, BirthNet, Inc., Child Welfare Organizing Project (CWOP), Choices in Childbirth, Citizens for Midwifery (CFM), The National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health (NLIRH), The National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women's Health (NPWH), National Organization for Women of New Jersey, National Women's Health Network (NWHN) and Statewide Parent Advocacy Network (SPAN) and the Tatia Oden French Memorial Foundation.

This policy is a misguided attempt to protect children from what many believe are the devastating effects of illegal drug use. Fortunately, as the brief describes and the South Carolina Supreme Court recently unanimously acknowledged, the scientific research in this area shows that the effects of drug use during pregnancy are comparable to those of smoking cigarettes, and are, in fact, akin to the risks presented by many common conditions and experiences of pregnant women.

The brief argues that the prosecution and conviction of A.K. violates the plain language and intent of
Alabama’s chemical endangerment statute, is unsupported by scientific research, is contrary to the consensus judgment of medical practitioners and their professional organizations, and undermines individual and public health. It urges the Court to refuse the prosecutorial invitation to judicially expand the chemical endangerment law and requests that the Court overturn A.K.’s conviction.

The organizations and experts who filed this brief are: The American Public Health Association; National Association of Social Workers; Alabama Women’s Resource Network; American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry; American Society of Addiction Medicine; Center for Gender and Justice; Child Welfare Organizing Project; Citizens for Midwifery; Global Lawyers and Physicians; The Institute for Health and Recovery; International Center for Advancement of Addiction Treatment; National Association of Nurse Practitioners in Women’s Health; National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence; National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health; National Organization for Women (NOW)- Alabama ; National Women’s Health Network; Our Bodies Ourselves; The Southern Center for Human Rights; Nancy Day MPH., PhD.; Deborah A. Frank, M.D.; Leslie Hartley Gise, M.D.; Stephen R. Kandall, M.D.; James Nocon, M.D., J.D.; Linda L.M. Worley, MD.

Attorneys on the case include Mary Bauer of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Tamar Todd of the Drug Policy Alliance, Kathrine Jack, and Lynn Paltrow, both of National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW). A special thanks also goes out to the law student summer Interns, Jolene Forman of DPA and Amanda Melnick, Rush Miller, and Noor Kapoor of NAPW.

NAPW also worked with international human rights experts and organizations as well as leading bioethicists who filed amicus briefs opposing this misapplication of the criminal law to pregnant women, new mothers, and their children.

Your support enabled NAPW to organize more than 60 organizations (see full list of amicus below) to speak out against the prosecution of pregnant women and punitive policies that undermine the health of pregnant women, mothers, and babies. We hope that you will celebrate this victory that you helped to make possible, and continue to support our work on behalf of women in Kentucky and across the nation.

As always, donating to NAPW is a great way to show your support.

NAPW and our colleagues represented the following groups in the public health amicus brief: the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG); American Psychiatric Association; National Perinatal Association; Kentucky Coalition for Women's Substance Abuse Services; Kentucky Psychiatric Medical Association; American Society of Addiction Medicine; Child Welfare Organizing Project; National Association of Social Workers; National Coalition for Child Protection Reform; Northwest Women's Law Center; National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum; Pathways, Inc.; Baron Edmond de Rothschild Chemical Dependency Institute of Beth Israel Medical Center; The Drug Policy Alliance; People Advocating Recovery; Sistersong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective; Our Bodies, Ourselves; The Healing Place Women's and Children's Community; Law Students for Reproductive Justice; Fran Belvin, CPAT; Susan Barron, PhD; Susan Boyd, PhD; Stephanie S. Covington, PhD, LCSW; Nancy Day, PhD; Lynn Posze, MA, LPCC; and Carol Stange, MSSW.

Lawrence Nelson and Forrest Roberts filed an amicus brief on behalf of the American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry; Anna C. Mastroianni, JD, MPH; Bryan Hilliard, PhD; C. Ronald Koons, MD, FACP; Cavin P. Leeman, PhD; David Magnus, PhD; Donald Brunnquell, PhD, LP; Elaine Morgan, MD; Glenn McGee, PhD; Global Lawyers and Physicians; Gregory Loeben, PhD; Hilde Lindemann, PhD; Howard Brody, MD, PhD; Howard Minkoff, MD; Inmaculada de Melo-Martin, PhD, MS; Jeffrey Kahn, PhD, MPH; Judith Bernstein, RNC, PHD; Katherine A. Taylor, JD, PhD; Lauren G. McAliley, MSN, MA, CNP; Lois Shepard, JD; Mary Faith Marshall, PhD; Peter J. Cohen, MD, JD; Rebecca Bigoney, MD; Rev. Timonthy A. Torstenson; Robert A. Deweese, MD, MA; Rosamond Rhodes, PhD; Stephen S. Hanson, PhD; Susan K. Palmer, MD; and Timothy F. Murphy, PhD.

Carrie Bettinger-Lopez and Michael Jay O'Hara filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Anti-Sexism Committee of the National Lawyers Guild; Center for Reproductive Rights; Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic; Columbia Law School Sexuality and Gender Law Clinic; Constitutional Litigation Clinic at Rutgers School of Law, Newark; Criminal Justice Clinic at Hofstra Law School; International Mental Disability Law Refor Project in the Justice Action Center at New York Law School; International Reproductive and Sexual Health Law Programme at the University of Toronto; Jamie O'Connell (University of California, Berkeley School of Law, International Human Rights Clinic); Justice Now; Leitner Center for International Law & Justice at Fordham Law School; Mindy Jane Roseman (Harvard Law School, Human Rights Program); and Southwest Women's Law Center.

Sheryl Snyder, Amy Cubbage, and Jill Morrison filed an amicus brief on behalf of Legal Momentum and National Women's Law Center. David Alan Friedman and William Ellis Sharp filed an amicus brief on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation Reproductive Freedom Project and American Civil Liberties Union Of Kentucky.

Because prosecutions don’t actually protect children, and because the only way a woman who has a drug problem can be sure to avoid arrest is to have an abortion, no state legislature in the country has actually passed a law making it a crime for a woman with a drug problem to continue her pregnancy to term and give birth.

Even South Carolina’s state legislature refused to pass such a law. Unfortunately, however, activist judges on the South Carolina Supreme Court rewrote state law to permit the arrest of any pregnant woman who even “risks” harm to her viable fetus. For example, Cornelia Whitner gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby. The baby, however, tested positive for cocaine. Ms. Whitner was charged with child abuse based on the claims that a fetus is a child under state law. Although not a single residential treatment program designed to meet the needs of pregnant women existed in South Carolina at the time, Ms. Whitner pleaded guilty thinking it would help get her access to the treatment she needed. Instead of treatment Ms. Whitner got eight years in prison.

Regina McKnight, another South Carolina woman suffered a stillbirth. Although the stillbirth was the result of an infection unrelated to Ms. McKnight’s drug problem, she was charged with homicide by child abuse. Prosecutors in South Carolina knew that they could win a conviction for homicide simply by putting a low-income, African-American woman in front of a jury and telling them that this woman had used cocaine while pregnant. Ms. McKnight was convicted after only 15 minutes of deliberation and sentenced to twelve years in jail.

After Ms. McKnight had already served eight of those years, attorneys Rauch Wise and Susan Dunn from South Carolina (with the help of attorneys from the law firm Jenner and Block on behalf of the DKT Liberty Project and NAPW), finally got the conviction overturned. The court ruled that Ms. McKnight had not been adequately represented at trial. Specifically, the court found that Ms. McKnight’s public defender had ignored "recent studies showing that cocaine is no more harmful to a fetus than nicotine use, poor nutrition, lack of prenatal care, or other conditions commonly associated with the urban poor."

As of this writing, however, South Carolina still ranks number one in the country for the arrest of pregnant women and last in the amount of state dollars spent on drug treatment.

NAPW knows that many people who support the arrest of drug-using pregnant women make assumptions about them. They cannot see beyond the color of their skin, or the fact that they are poor and pregnant, or that the woman is a "drug-user." But those of us who work on behalf of “drug-using” women, see something different. We see past the drug war and anti-abortion rhetoric. We see beyond the racism and the politics of blame. We see precious human beings who deserve support. These are women whose capacity for love, learning, giving, growing and healing never comes as a surprise to us.

Once such woman is Trena Walker, featured in the video below. I met Ms. Walker many years ago when my family was visiting South Carolina. Ms. Walker babysat for my children. What I remember most about her is that she was a remarkably sensitive and gifted child-care provider.

Her pregnancy and her struggle with addiction, however, could far too easily have become the excuse to lock her up. The ongoing political effort to separate the fetus from the mother in the eyes of the law has not only resulted in the arrest of women who seek abortion, but also scores of pregnant women in South Carolina who have continued their pregnancies to term.

With the aid of a talented advocate, Susan Dunn, Ms. Walker avoided what more than 90 other women in South Carolina experienced when they went to term in spite of a drug problem. These women were turned over to the police by healthcare providers, they were arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, and then subject to life-long shame and stigmatization. These are women who love their children but who couldn’t overcome an addiction faster than any other person with an addiction, including privileged public figures like Rush Limbaugh and Daryl Strawberry

All of these women are precious, and they all deserve to be treated with dignity, as human beings entitled to treatment that works, and support that will enable them and their children to thrive.

(C.R.A.C.K is currently called Project Prevention).

On the surface, CRACK’s goals don’t necessarily seem dangerous or objectionable. For example they say that “The program is completely voluntary for participants,” and that their mission is “to empower the active or recovering addict with the ability and freedom to control their lives.” Statement, by their founder and director, Barbara Harris however make clear that control, not empowerment, is in fact CRACK’s primary purpose.

“Addict, recovering addict, dirty, clean . . . whatever. The distinction hardly matters to CRACK (Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity), the group that gave [the client] the money. ‘As long as they stay on birth control,’ says founder Barbara Harris, ‘That’s all we care about.’

Similarly, Ms. Harris has stated: “Finally I realized. . . . that if I wanted these women to take birth control, I’d have to do it on my own,” and she has said “It’s sad that they’re on drugs, but the bottom line is, I don’t want them to get pregnant.” Ms. Harris has also written: “We don’t say we’re concerned with the welfare of the mothers. Crack’s mission is to stop them from having more doomed babies.” A flyer they distributed also strongly suggests that their real mission is control rather than empowerment. It’s headline read: “Don’t let a pregnancy ruin your drug habit.”

In fact, CRACK’s chief spokesperson, has expressed extraordinary disdain for the program’s clients, comparing them to animals: “I’m not saying these women are dogs, but they’re not acting any more responsible than a dog in heat.” She has also stated: “We don’t allow dogs to breed. We spay them. We neuter them. We try to keep them from having unwanted puppies, and yet these women are literally having litters of children.” And again, in another context: “They’re having litters. They are literally having litters.” On the television news program 60 Minutes II, Ms. Harris was asked about these comments and given an opportunity to distance herself from them. She replied: “Well you know my son that goes to Stanford said ‘Mom, please don’t ever say that again’ But it’s the truth, they don’t just have one and two babies they have litters.”

Although CRACK claims that --“[e]very woman that chooses to use birth control does so by choice, we don’t talk anyone into making that decision, the decision is up to her and her doctor,” this does not always seem to be the case.

In Michigan, the CRACK program was willing to pay $500 for one woman whose childbearing they found particularly egregious. According to Pam Cade who started the Michigan chapter of CRACK “. . .this case is so horrible that we want to make her an offer she can’t refuse.” Barbara Harris, said “We will get this woman on birth control by any means necessary.” “If she says no, we’ll up the ante.” And, indeed, the news story about their efforts reports that “[t]he group has enlisted a Pontiac police officer to find [the woman] and extend the offer.”

The testimonials that CRACK chooses to post on their website make clear their true mission of control: “We are both firm supporters of your ideas to control and or stop CRACK addicted mothers from having any more addicted babies, by requiring such methods as Norplant;” “Personally I feel if a "bribe" is what it takes to get these people from having unwanted and damaged children then let's bribe them.”

When: Thursday, April 29, 2010 (half day program 12p-5p)
Where: NYU School of Law, 40 Washington Square South, Manhattan

More information and registration

Continuing Education Credits in the areas of Law, Social Work & CASAC will be offered.
4.5 CLE credits in "Ethics and Professionalism"
4.0 Hours CASAC Section II
4.0 Hours CPP Section I
4.0 Hours CPS Section I
5.0 CEU Social Work

Whether this historic health care reform maintains the injustice of existing anti-abortion restrictions or makes them worse really depends on the extent to which the mainstream pro-choice movement takes this experience as an opportunity to develop more effective political strategies.

Lynn Paltrow

Best Wishes to All,
Lynn

Representative Wimmer, the bill's sponsor, has assured critics that the bill would only be applied "in the most glaring of cases." But whatever his intention, cases from around the country demonstrate that once law enforcement officials have the discretion to arrest, and judges have the opportunity to interpret the law, legislators no longer have control. In fact there have already been cases where government officials seeking to protect the "unborn" have sought to keep pregnant women from obtaining cancer treatment.

Moreover, sending the message that what women "know" and do while pregnant may be a crime also influences how doctors and nurses treat pregnant women. They become less likely to help women and more likely to judge them. In Iowa, it was a health care provider who called the police when a distraught pregnant woman sought help after she fell down a flight of stairs. The young woman was arrested for "attempted feticide." The police eventually withdrew the charge, but only after this young mother had been taken into custody, spent several days in jail and several weeks terrified about what was going to happen next.

If the Utah bill becomes law, a pregnant woman whose health care provider reports her to the police will not be comforted by the fact that, eventually, someone might decide that her actions were merely "reckless" and not "knowing."

Some supporters of the bill would claim that this bill is really just about punishing women who intentionally seek to "self-abort." For people who profoundly oppose abortion, it seems logical that legislation could be carefully crafted to distinguish between pregnant women who seek to terminate their pregnancies and those who do not. Criminal laws, however, depend on application of intent standards and are enforced by police officers and prosecutors who have extraordinary discretion in deciding who will and will not be arrested. Because everything a pregnant woman does or does not do can affect pregnancy outcome, it is hard to come up with an example of a law that could be applied only to women who "truly" intend to end their pregnancies while ensuring that pregnant women who do not intend to terminate their pregnancies or risk harm to their fetuses are protected from police investigation, interrogation, arrest, and prosecution.

Even if this Utah bill were carefully crafted (and it is not), its main purpose clearly is not to advance a culture of life, but rather to advance laws that permit imprisonment of pregnant women. The description of the bill explains its purpose as removing "prohibitions against prosecution" of women. In other words--Utah apparently aspires to be the first state to admit that the purpose of an anti-abortion law is not to stop doctors from performing abortions, but to lock up women who have them.

In fact, this bill was created out of frustration that no law existed that could be used to imprison a 17-year-old girl. According to its sponsor, Utah's HB 462 was passed to respond to a case in which a desperate a pregnant teenager hired someone to attack her and cause her to lose the pregnancy. It should be clear, however, that any young woman who is desperate enough to invite violence against her--violence that could have caused her own death--is not going to be deterred by this law.

Imprisoning this teenager, who survived and gave birth to a healthy baby, would have cost taxpayers approximately $30,000 a year. If the real purpose of the law were to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, the state could invest, for example, in Backline, an organization that could provide non-judgmental counseling to women struggling with their pregnancies.

The real purpose of the Utah bill, however, is to make it possible to police pregnant women and to imprison them as murderers. That deserves a firestorm of opposition as well.

While our country stands at a deadlock over legislation to ensure that millions of uninsured people have health care coverage, we can at least feel confident that some state legislators are hard at work, making it more difficult for women to access health care and much easier for states to put them, and the people who help them, in jail.

On Monday, NAPW got the last word in a New York Times story about a pending law that would enable the state of Utah to lock up pregnant women who experience pregnancy loss at any stage of pregnancy, and this morning I had the chance to speak about these issues on Democracy Now.

You can help oppose Utah's law by signing this petition to the Utah Governor, by flooding state leaders and the internet with comments opposing a law that seeks to put pregnant women and new mothers behind bars, and by joining this Facebook page started by a Utah activist.

As NAPW Staff Attorney Kathrine Jack explained last week to members of the U.S. State Department as part of the Universal Periodic Review Consultation process, the prosecution of pregnant women constitutes a violation of international human rights. The Review, mandated by the United Nations, was created to expose human rights concerns and help countries begin to address them.

You can also help protect the rights and dignity of pregnant and parenting women by spreading the word about our second continuing education program designed to ensure that policies are based on solid scientific information, not myth and misinformation. Drugs, Pregnancy and Parenting: What the Experts Have to Say Part II will be held in New York on Thursday, April 29, 2010.

We are very grateful to Jessica Simkovic, our video producer, who is pregnant, due in the Spring, and fully aware that Roe v. Wade protects her rights to personhood at all stages of her pregnancy!

Therefore, according to EVERY historical rendition depicting Santa's reindeer, EVERY single one of them, from Rudolph to Blitzen, had to be a female. And probably pregnant.

Best Wishes to All for the New Year!

Lynn and the Staff of NAPW

Notice that this law is directed to “conduct” that “creates a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury.” Many people in positions of power think that a pregnant woman who refuses cesarean surgery, have births outside of hospital settings, or insists on a vaginal birth after previous cesarean surgery is creating a “substantial danger of death or serious physical injury” to an unborn child.

The Commonwealth wants the Kentucky Supreme Court to interpret this law, and, in fact, every criminal law in the state, to include pregnant women in relationship to the fetuses they carry. Indeed, a close reading of the lower court’s opinion and the Commonwealth’s arguments makes clear that they hope, through this court case, to pass what would, in effect, be a “personhood measure.” As a result, even abortions necessary to protect a woman’s life or health could be charged as homicide.

Because of the broad implications of this case and the medical misinformation it relies on, sixty public health and advocacy organizations as well as numerous experts signed on to amicus (friend of the court) briefs explaining why the court should reject the Commonwealth’s invitation to radically re-write state law. Not a single organization filed an amicus brief supporting this kind of dangerous judicial activism.

Kentucky treatment and recovery advocates Michael Barry and Pam Scott published an op-ed in the Courier-Journal explaining why Arresting pregnant women is bad for babies. Here is what they have to say:

On Dec. 10, 2009, the Kentucky Supreme court will consider a case involving a woman who gave birth and got arrested. In this case the Commonwealth claims that because a cocaine-using pregnant woman went to term, she should be punished for the crime of “wanton endangerment” for threatening the health of her “unborn” child. Two other women were recently arrested on similar grounds. Here are five surprising reasons why arresting pregnant drug-using women is a bad idea:

Threatening pregnant women with arrest is bad for babies. Babies have the best birth outcomes when their mothers are not afraid to come in for health care, not afraid to talk honestly to their health care providers, and when they can find the right kind of help for their problems. This explains why threatening pregnant women with arrest and prosecution is bad for babies. While using drugs, smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, and many other things can create risks, the good news is women who get health care during pregnancy, whether or not they can overcome an addiction, can have healthy babies. Women who are afraid that getting health care will lead to arrest often stop coming in for health care, or if they go, keep their drug problems secret. This is one reason why every medical group in the country to address the issue, including the March of Dimes and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose prosecution of pregnant women.

Threatening arrests and prosecutions create an incentive for women to have abortions. Given how hard it is for most people to overcome an addiction problem quickly (even strong and successful people like Rush Limbaugh) laws that threaten to punish women who carry their pregnancies to term in spite of a drug problem puts pressure on them to get unwanted abortions. In North Dakota, a woman was arrested on charges similar to those in Kentucky. She was twelve weeks pregnant at the time and managed to obtain an abortion. The result? The prosecutor dropped the criminal charges citing the fact that she had “terminated her pregnancy.” Indeed, if the Kentucky Supreme Court uses the current case to permit prosecution of women who “endanger” their unborn children, we might as well post signs saying: “If you are pregnant and can't achieve abstinence immediately, have an abortion now, before you get arrested.”

Education, health care, and support work. For years Kentucky has led the country in applying proven methods for helping drug using women. Since Kentucky adopted laws supporting education and treatment over arrest, it has seen a dramatic increase in the number of women receiving prenatal care. In 1990, Kentucky was ranked 26th out of 50 states for prenatal care. In 2000, Kentucky improved its rank to 11th. Infant mortality rates fell 25 percent during that decade and in 2001, Kentucky reported the lowest infant mortality rate since statistics were first recorded. In contrast, South Carolina, the only state that has upheld the prosecution of women who go to term in spite of a drug problem, ranks near the bottom of the list on infant mortality.

Women who use drugs while pregnant are not doing so because they don't care about their babies. The truth is lots of people use drugs — legal and illegal. Some become addicted and just like people who struggle with obesity and hypertension, most would like to change their behaviors, but find that they can't do so immediately or without the right kind of help. Kentucky does have some specialized programs for women — but not yet nearly enough. Threatening arrest doesn't help them or their babies. And the good news is that we have much less to fear than we thought if recovery is not immediate.

What the medical research says about cocaine use and pregnancy is very different from what most people have heard on the news. Scientific experts as well as leading government agencies now confirm that the use of cocaine is not uniquely or inevitably harmful. The National Institute for Drug Abuse has reported that while babies born to mothers who used cocaine while pregnant “were at one time written off by many as a lost generation... It was later found that this was a gross exaggeration.” And, as the U.S. Sentencing Commission concluded, “[t]he negative effects of prenatal cocaine exposure are significantly less severe than previously believed” and those negative effects “do not differ from the effects of prenatal exposure to other drugs, both legal and illegal.” While health experts do not say that there are no health risks associated with cocaine use during pregnancy, the good news is that they overwhelmingly agree that the risks are comparable to cigarettes and less than the possible harm from excessive alcohol use. Exaggerated claims of harm from illegal drugs should not provide the cover for drastically changing Kentucky law, to permit treating pregnant women who do any of these things as criminals.

MIKE BARRY, CEO, People Advocating Recovery

PAM SCOTT, Director, The Healing Place for Women, Louisville 40203

Recently, NAPW chose to work on behalf of R.G. -- an African American teenager from Mississippi who became pregnant when she was fifteen. She suffered a stillbirth one month after turning sixteen. What was the state's response? They arrested her and charged her with murder.

NAPW learned about the case shortly before R.G. was scheduled to go on trial as an adult. We learned that her mother's efforts to obtain help from other organizations had been rebuffed. NAPW reached out to her local counsel and offered our assistance.

NAPW knows that, like the people in the movie Precious, the people who reported R.G. and arrested her -- the people who assumed that the criminal laws could legitimately be applied to her -- judged her. They could not see beyond the color of her skin, or the fact that she was pregnant at age 15 or that she was a "drug-user." Every woman we have represented, every woman we have worked on behalf of (African-American, White, Latina, Native American) has been, to some extent, written off like Precious, whose dark skin, overweight body, and pregnancy was all that most people could see.

But NAPW sees something different. We see past the drug war and anti-abortion rhetoric. We see beyond the racism and the politics of blame. We know that each of the women we work to help is a precious human being who deserves NAPW's support. These are women whose capacity for love, learning, giving, growing and healing never comes as a surprise to us. See the movie Precious and you will have some idea of what I mean.

The cases we work on also have huge legal implications - potentially setting devastating precedent that could be used to punish abortion and stillbirths as murder and pregnant women as child abusers. These cases could dramatically intensify the war on drugs, extending it to women's wombs and drastically expanding the scope of the criminal justice system to include all pregnant women.

Last week, NAPW worked with committed Mississippi defense lawyers Carrie A. Jourdan and Robert B. McDuff to file a motion to dismiss the charges against R.G. We told our allies and experts in the field about the case. Attorneys at the Drug Policy Alliance and the Southern Poverty Law Center's Mississippi Youth Justice Project filed an amicus brief on behalf of numerous local and national health and advocacy organizations explaining that the prosecution of R.G. is not supported as a matter of science, is inappropriate as a matter of public health, and is unfounded as a matter of law.

Contributions to NAPW helps us represent and support precious women. For this work, for the privilege of doing this work, I am thankful.

NAPW and co-sponsors hoped this contest would encourage a new generation of legal scholars to address birthing issues as proper subjects of academic research and legal action. We are proud to announce the winners of this cutting-edge contest:

Second Prize: Elizabeth Kukura, New York University School of Law, Choice in Birth: Preserving Access to VBAC (Pending publication, Penn State Law Review Winter 2009 Issue.)

Third Prize: Paul Christopher Torio, Santa Clara University School of Law Nature Versus Suture: Why VBAC Should Still Be in Vogue

Honorable Mention: L. Indra Lusero, University of Denver, Sturm College of Law Challenging Hospital VBAC Bans Through Tort Liability: Reasonableness and the Limits of Informed Consent

We were very pleased by the quality of the responses that we received, particularly considering that this is likely to be the first time that many law students have considered birthing issues as civil and human rights issues.

We have the rare pleasure of knowing that the Contest is already having the desired influence on feminist jurisprudence and advocacy in the field. In addition to the publication of at least two of the papers, UDC Clarke School of Law student Lisa Pratt recently presented a paper inspired by the contest at Perinatal, symposium on birth practices and reproductive rights. Her paper, which proposes civil rights legislation protecting pregnant women’s informed consent and decision-making in childbirth, was an inspiring call to action for the birth activists and legal experts assembled.

Because we believe that the issue of women’s rights during labor is critical to the study of gender and the law, we are sponsoring another contest this year on birthing rights. This will continue our outreach to law students and our efforts to encourage emerging legal scholars to push for the inclusion of birthing issues in the discussion of feminist jurisprudence.

Congratulations to the contest winners, and good luck to the 2009-2010 contestants!