Posted on 10/02/2005 12:20:36 PM PDT by rwh
CHEYENNE -- One of the many people following the Lander "meth baby" case was Rep. Elaine Harvey of Lovell.
The Republican lawmaker is the chief sponsor of the 2004 felony child endangerment law the defendant, Michele Ann Foust, 31, was charged under.
Harvey said Wednesday she is having an amendment drafted to make it clear the law applies to an unborn child as well as a child.
The lack of a clear definition in the law caused District Judge Norman Young to dismiss charges against Foust.
"I thought we were covered. The intent was to protect unborn children but apparently this is a gray area," Harvey said.
The law targets methamphetamine, the drug scourge of the state, and was designed to punish parents who endanger their children by making or taking the drug.
Foust, who was on probation for previous methamphetamine use, delivered a boy Oct. 31. Later both mother and son tested positive for methamphetamine.
The law carries a penalty of five years in prison, a $5,000 fine, or both for allowing a child to be in a place where methamphetamine is "possessed, stored or ingested."
Harvey said she will take her proposed amendment to a meeting of the Governor's Task Force on Drug Endangered Children this week in Cheyenne.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor in the Foust case, Ed Newell, said he will also seek legislation to attach the problem, but through existing criminal laws rather than by changing the child endangerment law.
"I don't want to jump into that whole abortion briar patch," he said. "I have no interest in spawning a lot of pro-choice, pro-life debates."
He suggested amending the law against use of a controlled substance to increase the penalty for a pregnant user.
A second step would be to require a mandatory minimum sentence for people who deliver methamphetamine to a pregnant woman.
The prosecutor also said he knows about five or six prenatal substance abuse cases similar to the Foust case.
The state has no statistics on the number of meth-addicted babies born in the state.
Birth certificates contain information about prenatal alcohol and tobacco use but not about illegal drugs, said Angela Crotsenberg, epidemiologist with the Department of Health's Community and Family Health Division.
"It's a big problem but we don't know the scope of it," she said.
State policymakers, beginning in the late 1980s, have struggled with the question of how society should deal with women's prenatal substance abuse.
As of Sept. 1, no state specifically criminalizes drug use during pregnancy, said a report from the Gutmacher Institute.
Prosecutors, the report said, have tried to rely on existing criminal laws to attack the problem.
So far only the South Carolina Supreme Court upheld such a conviction ruling that a woman's substance abuse late in pregnancy constitutes criminal child abuse, the report said.
Linda Burt, director of the Wyoming Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said these laws put women in a vulnerable position and discourage them from getting prenatal care or treatment for abuse problems.
"They're not helpful to women and they're not helpful to children," Burt said.
The only bill the Legislative Service Office could find that dealt specifically with prenatal substance abuse was never introduced, said its sponsor, former House Speaker Bruce Hinchey of Casper.
Hinchey's bill, prepared for the 1996 budget session, would have required medical professionals to report neonatal substance abuse by the mother.
It also authorized the Department of Family Services to take into temporary protective custody a newborn infant that tested positive for illegal drugs.
Hinchey said he sponsored the bill because of the number of reported cases of women taking illegal drugs during pregnancy.
He never introduced the bill partly because people warned him it would touch off a debate on abortion rights.
"This was about doing something to protect the baby," Hinchey said."I didn't want it to be an abortion debate."
Harvey's bill passed the House unanimously and the Senate on a 23-7 roll call vote.
One legislator who voted against it, Sen. Jayne Mockler, D-Cheyenne, said opponents argued that the law could increase the number of abortions.
A woman who uses illegal drugs and learns she is pregnant, she said, is more likely to get an abortion if she knows she will be prosecuted if authorities find out.
"I think it's an extra pressure on the women to abort the baby," Mockler said. "I'm sure we'll have the same arguments again."
By this same argument we should laws against drinking and smoking during pregnancy too.
Therein lies the nexus of the whole problem. If an unborn child can be protected from a "METH" mother then they can be protected from the "Pro-Choice" feminazis.
Drinking and smoking are legal, for now anyway. While they have some bad effects on the unborn, Meth is a little more nasty plus it's an illegal drug. I shudder to think what it does to a fetus.
My question is this:
Are these METH mothers in Meth-Plagued Wyoming on Welfare where having additional babies increases their benefit incomes?
Why have complicated laws? Make stiff penalties for those using drugs, something like a sliding scale depending on their cooperation in finding the seller above them, and enforce them from the day of first arrest. Make it 25 max for drug offenses, and the death penalty for manufacture with intent. Allow the judge and prosecutor to give anything from treatment to, the max for being a pigeon.
My wife and I are going thru adoption classes now. A lot of the kids up for adoption are fetal alcohol syndrome kids. It's the worst of all of the drug/pregnancy interactions. It never gets better. The crack babies usually get over it and end up pretty normal. I don't know about meth. But from the info I have seen now, drinking during pregnancy IS child abuse.
don't know, but if you want some information on welfare reforms in Wyoming then read this article;
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0111/p01s01-uspo.html
Wyoming has had a 90 percent reduction in the amount of people on welfare, as opposed to the national average of 52 percent. It looks like you should call your state representatives and tell them to follow Wyoming's lead!!!
***That is outstanding about Wyoming's welfare reduction. Obviously, there is no cause and effect regarding welfare benefits. But, what about Wyoming's METH plague?
I'm going to sound like the dumbest person in the world, but how is meth used? Smoked or what?
Need a libertarian to answer that, any of you folks around here?
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