Kentucky Courts Review Cases Involving Pregnant Women Who Use Drugs

The Louisville Courier-Journal writes that Kentucky's Supreme Court is looking again at a decision involving a mother and a newborn who both tested positive cocaine after the child's birth.

Ina Cochran had been charged following her daughter's birth but the charge was later dismissed on the grounds that an unborn child doesn't qualify as a person in the state's penal code. Now the indictment has been brought again after an appeal by prosecutors.

"It would be absurd to recognize the viable fetus as a person for purposes of homicide laws but not for the purposes of statutes proscribing child abuse," said the Kentucky attorney general. That includes pregnant mothers who abuse drugs, they say.

But others, including Cochran's lawyers and women's groups, say that such prosecutions will discourage women from prenatal care and hospital births.