Pregnancy And Treatment

Pregnancy And Treatment

Introduction

The topic of this essay is to analyze that should a pregnant women be forced to receive medical treatment? This analysis can be made by the help of a case study of Alicia Beltran. New mothers and pregnant women have to follow a wide variety of legal issues during pre-natal and post natal period. These legal issues are there so that proper efforts are made to ensure the safety and health of the new-born child.

Discussion

Story of Alicia Beltran

Alicia Beltran is a 28 year old woman. She was fourteen week pregnant when during a pre-natal checkup she described the hospital authorities about a pill addiction since last year but managed to convince them that she has stopped taking the pill on her own. This was later verified by a urine test. But then a cynical social worker and a doctor accused her by saying that she has tried to endanger her new born child. The doctor and the social worker made accusations against her because she refused to start an anti addiction drug therapy. She was taken at a family court, where the family court commissioner denied her appeal for a lawyer and she was amazed to see that the court had already appointed a legal guardian for her baby. She appealed in the court by saying that she was not aware of the fact that unborn children had lawyers. The Wisconsin law which is also known as cocaine mom act was formulated in 1998. Under this law the child protection/ welfare can arrest a women using illegal or severe degree drugs or alcohol and refuses to accept the treatment. Ms Beltran is arrested under the category exhibit A. This law is now being challenged as an unconstitutional law in the federal court. This is a unique case because this would be the first time when a federal court would experience challenge against a fetal protection law. The opponents of this law are hopeful of setting an important example in continued tug of war between the legal rights of the unborn fetus over the rights of pregnant women. Wisconsin is one of the states of USA located along with South Dakota, Minnesota and Oklahoma. These states have laws which grant certain authorities power to arrest a pregnant woman if seen abusing any substance, be it any drug or alcohol. This law considers the protection and health of unborn fetus as a top most priority. Many other states of USA use other set of laws such as assorted criminal, child protection and civil-confinement law and force women into rehabilitation programs or punish them for taking drugs which are harmful to the fetus.

According to the Wisconsin law the women are deprived of medical privacy, physical liberty, constitutional rights and other due processes. It is also based on the flawed information provided about the risks to the fetus and this does more harm than good as it scares pregnant women of the pre-natal care (Eckholm, ...