Big Government Judicial Activists in Alabama Criminalize Bad Mothering

[OohPooPahDoo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/magazine/the-criminalization-of-bad-mothers.html


In short, the Alabama passed a law designed to punish parents who raise children around meth labs - the law was never intended to extend to the womb - as evidenced by the fact it doesn't say so in the law and the legislature has repeadetly rejected attempts to define a fetus as a person - yet the court has decided to intepret the law in a manner that could allow up to a LIFE SENTENCE for something so ridiculously minor as taking a hit of marijuana while pregnant - even if you don't know you're pregnant!

Criminal convictions of women for their newborns’ positive drug tests are rare in other states, lawyers familiar with these cases say. In most places, maternal drug use is considered a matter for child protective services, not for law enforcement. Advocates for Kimbrough insist that, in any case, Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law was never meant to apply to pregnant women’s drug use. “The words ‘womb,’ ‘uterus,’ ‘pregnant women’ don’t appear in the law,” Ketteringham says. “It was a law meant to protect children from meth labs.” One state legislator has filed an amicus brief, claiming the law was not intended to be used this way, and the Legislature has repeatedly rejected amendments to expand the law’s definition of “child” to explicitly mean “fetus.”

Why pass a law defining a fetus as a person when the judicial activists court can do it for you?

Last summer, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld this expanded interpretation of the chemical-endangerment law, ruling that the dictionary definition of “child” includes “unborn child,” an interpretation that will be challenged when the state’s Supreme Court considers Kimbrough’s case in the coming months.

 

[Ravi]

2 questions.

WTF if wrong with Alabama?

Why are the fathers not being charged, only the mothers?

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

2 questions.

WTF if wrong with Alabama?

Why are the fathers not being charged, only the mothers?

women are 2nd class citizens, that's why