Jailing Mom to Protect Her Unborn Child
[Guest post by DRJ]
A Texas court is considering whether it was legal for a Corpus Christi woman to be jailed to protect her unborn child from her drug use:
“After pleading guilty to forging checks in 2005, Lovill was sentenced to three years of community supervision, a form of probation, and ordered into a substance abuse program.
Two failed drug tests in the first three months, however, resulted in Lovill spending one year incarcerated in a drug treatment facility, where she remained until February 2007.
Five months later, another positive drug test prompted probation officials to have Lovill arrested and held in the Nueces County Jail while they sought to revoke her probation. This time, she was pregnant.
At Lovill’s revocation hearing, probation officer Sandra Garza asked that Lovill be sentenced to the Nueces County Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility, where a “special needs unit” could offer medical care while her pregnancy progressed.
“We considered her drug use being very high risk, and we were concerned for the baby,” Garza testified.
The judge agreed, ordering Lovill held in jail until a bed opened up at the treatment facility. Three months later, Lovill was still waiting in jail when she was taken to a Corpus Christi hospital to give birth to a son.”
Lovill’s boy lives with her relatives. She has reportedly completed a drug treatment program and “visits him regularly.”
Prosecutors claim Lovill was jailed for violating her probation and also to protect her unborn child. They assert the government has a valid interest in protecting an unborn child from the mother’s admitted drug abuse, and that ignoring her pregnancy is denying reality.
Lovill’s attorneys claim this is gender discrimination and dangerous for the mother and child because women are subjected to the “high stress, poor nutrition and wretched sanitary conditions of jail” or to drug treatment facilities described as a “prisonlike setting geared toward offenders with serious mental health problems.”
Lovill prevailed in her initial appeal and the case is now pending before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the equivalent of the Texas Supreme Court in criminal matters. Oral argument is scheduled for Wednesday in Austin.
— DRJ
Life imitates art. Law & Order: SVU did this 6 years ago in an episode entitled “Choice” that won an Annenberg “Sentinel for Health” award.
DRJ (f462b4) — 10/18/2009 @ 9:48 pmI’m curious whether pregnant women sometimes avoid jail because they are pregnant. Anyone know?
DRJ (f462b4) — 10/18/2009 @ 9:52 pmI feel terrible for the child.
Techie (482700) — 10/18/2009 @ 9:55 pmthe government has a valid interest in protecting an unborn child from the mother’s admitted drug abuse
Not really. The slippery slope is a lot obvious and our government is wankers.
Jailing pregnant women for possibly harming their fetuses can have grave health consequences as women lie to their doctors or avoid medical treatment altogether, Miller argued.
That’s compelling to me.
happyfeet (f62c43) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:01 pmHeck, women sometimes avoid speeding tickets because they’re women.
Cannonball Run, anyone?
John Hitchcock (3fd153) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:02 pmI’m sorry, but how can the “government” have an interest in preserving the rights of an unborn child?
What the heck was Roe v. Wade about anyway?
“We considered her drug use being very high risk, and we were concerned for the baby,” Garza testified.
What baby? There was no “baby” until it was delivered at term. Can someone direct me to the proper reality?
Ag80 (2a7a2a) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:04 pmThis is an example of the criminal justice system being damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.
j.pickens (8b5ad5) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:09 pmThe woman was already in a parole situation when she became pregnant.
For the officials responsible for her parole to ignore her pregnancy would be illogical.
She made her bed, she must deal with the consequences.
Unless proof of negligent behavior by her parole officers is shown, they should be immune from sanction, as they appear to be trying to do their jobs.
What the government has a vested interest in is locking away whoever gave a 6-month pregnant hoochie some crank I think. That’s what’s missing here. They should have threatened her to get her to roll over on that person. You know… like on the tv!
happyfeet (f62c43) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:10 pmThe woman was already in a parole situation when she became pregnant… She made her bed, she must deal with the consequences.
That is compelling to me too.
happyfeet (f62c43) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:13 pmBeing tweaked out on meth is not very stressful. Is that the ACLU’s argument? Not that she was violating her probation and did not deserve reincarceration?
daleyrocks (718861) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:30 pmDang, dale, I have to quit reading my monitor while lying down. Sideways, it looked like you wanted her to be reincarnated instead of reincarcerated.
John Hitchcock (3fd153) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:32 pmJohn – It sounds like a great scam. All women criminals awaiting trial or violating probation according to the ACLU should get knocked up to avoid jail time.
Sounds like reverse gender discrimination argument to me.
daleyrocks (718861) — 10/18/2009 @ 10:58 pmConcern for the baby is understandable. Concern for health, education, and many other issues for people who are incarcerated or on parole is understandable, as well as legally mandated, at least here in California. Many prisoners get free health care, educational opportunities, dental care, legal advice, easy access to substance abuse meetings, religious services, libraries, etc.
Incarceration is far from an enviable life-style, but our concern for convicted criminals (mostly trying to reduce what they cost society, and to comply with regulations) has endowed them with benefits that many a young working person struggles for.
Example: my spouse taught a vocational course at Pelican Bay. Inmates were taught a valuable marketable skill. Most were disinterested, and if they ever got released, which few would, the odds of them getting employment, even if they sought it, was slim to none.
Here in the outside world, voc ed is hard to find, hard to get admitted to, has to be paid for, and the student must still be responsible for his life. Particularly for young people who have kids, getting training is extremely difficult.
It all somehow makes sense, vaguely, but if I had a choice, I’d rather my tax $ be used to train an honest hard-working young person, rather than try to teach an inmate a skill to provide CDC with some product for “free”.
Somehow the idea that a kindly society must run the lives of society’s incompetents has run away with us.
jodetoad (059c35) — 10/18/2009 @ 11:11 pmSorry government, you get it one way or the other. If the bitch gets a pass to kill her unborn infant then she gets a pass to sacrifice it to Baal, give it lung cancer from smoking too much or do as much crank as she can shove up her nose. Seriously, you cannot have it both ways.
Curtis (653a53) — 10/18/2009 @ 11:38 pmGood of you to mention this, Ag80. Roe specifically grants the State increased interests in protecting the unborn in the second and third trimesters. If the fetus has reached 6 months, the State absolutely has constitutional authority under Roe to compel the mother into behavior(s) that are beneficial to the fetus.
Or did you believe the lie that your body is your own and nobody can tell you what to do with/to it?
Ed from SFV (f8f689) — 10/19/2009 @ 12:16 amIt isn’t the woman’s body; it is the child’s body that happens to be inside the woman’s body.
Icy Truth (6fdd44) — 10/19/2009 @ 12:21 amThie whole discussion demonstrates how degraded our society has become. On one hand, I wish we could clone the child and implant it in a woman who would love it and care about it, then tie the tubes of the original mother.
I feel that we have the right to live in a healthy society, one where one can raise a family in safety and where one’s values are supported, as opposed to being outlawed by courts. By failing to stop the growth of statism, we’ve forfeited our fundamental rights, and it will be hell getting them back, if that’s even possible. At this point, we’ve drifted so far from the model intended by our founders, and given ourselves to debauchery to such an extent, that I wonder if this society is worth saving or if it even can be saved.
AST (b6610c) — 10/19/2009 @ 1:57 amIt sounds to me more of a case of the trial court using a sentencing factor not authorized by the sentencing statute.
nk (df76d4) — 10/19/2009 @ 4:25 amI don’t have any problem with it. It’s ridiculous for her to engage in such behavior when she’s preganant, and society gets left picking up the bills for an unfortunate brain-damaged child who will require medical care for his/her entire life.
JEA (9f9fc9) — 10/19/2009 @ 4:41 amIt almost sounds like punishing someone for something they might do in the future. This is what the pro-gun crowd accuses me of suggesting on my gun control blog. My answer to them is if inconveniencing gun owners can help we may have to do it. In this case, on the other hand, I don’t see how they can justify locking the woman up, except that in Texas they have their own form of justice, don’t they?
mikeb302000 (6127bb) — 10/19/2009 @ 4:43 amWell, I certainly don’t condone her behavior, she can do what she wants to her body. I think it’s bad, gross behavior, but I don’t think it should be illegal.
Jenna Patrick (deb94d) — 10/19/2009 @ 5:07 amWell, I certainly don’t condone her behavior, she can do what she wants to her body. I think it’s bad, gross behavior, but I don’t think it should be illegal.
Comment by Jenna Patrick — 10/19/2009 @ 5:07 am
no one you know (7a9144) — 10/19/2009 @ 5:11 amIt isn’t only her body. It’s someone else’s body too, as Icy Truth said above.
There was a case in Utah recently where a girl hired a man to beat her in the stomach in order to abort her unborn child. She was not charged.
Maybe meth woman should claim that she was just trying to abort her child, which, thanks to Roe v. Wade, she has some kind of right to do.
I wonder where NARAL stands on this…
Patrick in Des Moines (3913e7) — 10/19/2009 @ 5:11 amAn addict, by definition, suffers from a brain disease that causes them to behave in a matter inconsistent with their own, or in this case, their’s and their unborn child’s interests.
I have no problem locking her up because she’s non compos mentis to start with: a danger to herself and others.
I would hope that she is afforded substance abuse counseling in jail, but even if she isn’t, jail can occasionally be a sufficiently motivating factor for the addict to seek out treatment on their own.
Because addiction treatment has such a low rate of success, anything that results in a better outcome for her or her child can (and likely should) be viewed as treatment rather than punishment. If there were other crimes involved, they need to be punished separately.
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 10/19/2009 @ 5:20 am#24 EW1:
EW1(SG) (edc268) — 10/19/2009 @ 5:22 amLock her away until she gives birth.
Metallica (e4735c) — 10/19/2009 @ 5:42 amWhen she gives birth, put the baby up for adoption, take her out, kneel her down and put a bullet in the back of her head. The find the father and put a bullet in the back of his head. Then find the crack dealer and put a bullet in his/her head.
You won’t have to do this too many times around the country before this problem begins to lessen significantly.
#2 DRJ:
I was acquainted with a crackhead shoplifter. She was pregnant. They put her in jail, and she ended up giving birth at a local hospital while cuffed to the bed, then back to jail. Dunno if that’s characteristic of what happens with pregnant criminals, but I suspect it is.
Perhaps one might get their sentence put off for a while if the pregnancy was high-risk and it’d be impossible to provide necessary care in the jail or prison.
In Lovill’s case, she violated probation by using drugs. That should result in her going back to jail (revocation of her probation), whether she’s pregnant or not. The fact that they were arguing about it makes me wonder if they’ve got an overcrowding problem.
flick (78d610) — 10/19/2009 @ 6:00 amI don’t know. if we let them do it, then basically means the rule is this:
f’ing your unborn child up with drugs is against the rules.
but killing him or her is okay.
Seems a little weird logically. I guess one of the contradictions raised by creating a right to abortion out of thin air.
A.W. (b1db52) — 10/19/2009 @ 6:02 amThat mike person above does not seem to understand the differences between Rights and voluntary action. Pretty simple – You have a Right to keep and bear arms. You do not have a right to drug a child to death.
AW points out the inherent contradictions in all of this quite well.
JD (d0d3cb) — 10/19/2009 @ 6:13 amMy sister did. She was an addict who also had a chronic shoplifting habit. With her 2nd pregnancy, she was put on house arrest with a cuff (although it was probably her 10th offense on the books) so the local jail didn’t have to pay for the birth of the child. I don’t know how common this is, but I’ve personally seen it happen.
scratcher (c7c5d8) — 10/19/2009 @ 6:44 amA message regarding pre-natal care from the obama administration: “take care of your precious baby as he or she develops in the womb. take care of your own health so your child will be healthy. or just kill it. what do we care?”
Seriously, um, huh?
And while we are talking contradictions, why is there so much overlap between the people who want government off their backs on specific things like drugs or abortion, but want the government to control your healthcare and choose what you eat and drink. I mean take you potheads for example. okay, do you really think pot doesn’t f— up your health? yeah, yeah, lots of people claim it doesn’t. Just as people used to claim tobacco was good for you; in fact i am willing to bet alot of it is secretly funded by the bigger suppliers of pot. But anything that makes you limp can’t actually be good for you, you know? So then why do so many potheads want universal health care? because you know, if they put that in, and its declared constitutional, then you are handing them an easy justification for regulating pot. Seriously, if you are pro-pot, then shouldn’t you be against big government? Because let’s talk reality, here. you are never going to get a majority of congress to agree with you on this. at best you will get a few states. so shouldn’t you want it left up to states and then hope to take over a few nutty places like Cali?
I mean hell, the precedent used to control pot growth was set by a liberal supreme court to allow for the new deal.
So, um, why are you supporting the dems on this?
oh, right, because you are potheads and your logic is impaired. Nevermind.
A.W. (b1db52) — 10/19/2009 @ 6:56 amI think common sense hasn’t just been relegated to the back seat – it’s been thrown out of the car here. Drug addicts have a choice whether they do drugs or not. Unborn babies do not. This isn’t about choosing to do drugs or big govt infringing on her ‘rights’, it’s about protecting someone else – her child – from her self-damaging actions.
JEA (9f9fc9) — 10/19/2009 @ 7:25 am“…I’m curious whether pregnant women sometimes avoid jail because they are pregnant…”
Why wouldn’t they, female members of the military regularly avoid combat/combat associated duty by becoming pregnant.
Comment by Metallica — 10/19/2009 @ 5:42 am
Not saying this is wrong, but this is an attitude that would come naturally to (say) a Political Commissar in Mukden.
AD - RtR/OS! (2f0f4a) — 10/19/2009 @ 8:14 amAs far as I am concerned, she should have been jailed for her crime (and violation of her sentence terms) and nothing else.
SarahW (692fc6) — 10/19/2009 @ 9:02 amWhat does she accomplish if she wins this case? Does she then have the right to go into the foster home and inject the child with all the meth/crack/whatever that he missed out on ingesting while she was incarcerated?
Or are damages being sought? You know, sort of a “The State didn’t let me ruin my boy’s life before he was even born with illegal drugs, so now I’m suing for $1 million plus punitive damages”?
Russ from Winterset (eeca76) — 10/19/2009 @ 10:50 am“…I’m curious whether pregnant women sometimes avoid jail because they are pregnant…”
Of course they do, if it’s for a minor crime. Just tell the jailer at the time of arrest that you have (insert disease here)and they will give you a ticket and send you home. The jail doesn’t want to pay your medical bills.
Bart998 (e9a2e5) — 10/19/2009 @ 12:22 pmAll I kept hearing in this description was drug use , what drugs are we refering to ? If it was meth.then I ,even as a libertarian agree with those who are trying to protect this child . If she was a pothead then I think she should be left alone. I read a couple of references in the comments to meth and crack, where did they get their info?
Sailfished (b32b4e) — 10/19/2009 @ 2:01 pmWhat baby? There was no “baby” until it was delivered at term. Can someone direct me to the proper reality?
Ag80, go look up the crime of “fetal homicide” and get back to us.
You might throw in a “wrongful life” lawsuit or two while you’re at it.
As far as whether it’s sex discrimination … I’m reminded of the old joke about the burglar who reached into a bedroom window and stole jewelry from a nightstand. At his trial, he contended that he shouldn’t be sentenced to jail, since it was his right arm that committed the crime. “Fine,” said the judge, “I sentence your right arm to three months in jail. What you decide to do with the rest of your body is up to you.”
It would have been interesting if the judge had ordered the live fetus, with “associated natural life-support facilities,” to be held in custody to protect it from harm, just to avoid the sex-discrimination objection.
Mike G in Corvallis (70f47e) — 10/19/2009 @ 2:13 pm