In 2006, Alabama lawmakers passed a bill aimed at punishing parents who turned their kitchens and garages into do-it-yourself meth labs, exposing their children to toxic chemicals and noxious fumes. Support was bipartisan, the vote was unanimous, and the bill was quickly signed into law.
Nine years later, authorities in Lauderdale County in northern Alabama have sought to use that same law to deny a 29-year-old pregnant inmate in the local jail—accused of exposing her fetus to drugs—the right to have an abortion. In doing so, they have pushed the abortion wars into uncharted territory and highlighted just how central the issue of drug use in pregnancy has become to the battle over Roe v. Wade.
The case of the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, is extraordinary in many ways, including how abruptly it seems to have ended—or maybe hasn't. Earlier this month, after the woman told jail officials she was in her first trimester and wanted an abortion, the Lauderdale district attorney took the unprecedented step of petitioning a juvenile court to strip her of parental rights to her unborn child. Doe's fetus was given a court-appointed lawyer. The proceedings, like most everything that happens in juvenile court, were secret.
[For more of this story, written by Nina Martin, go to http://www.psmag.com/politics-...nge-case-of-jane-doe]
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