For nearly five years, a state hospital in Charleston, South Carolina, collaborated with the local police department and prosecutors to secretly search a targeted group of pregnant women and new mothers for evidence of cocaine use - without a warrant or their consent. Instead of using the information to provide these women with appropriate medical care and treatment, hospital staff at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) gave it to the police who subsequently arrested women right out of their hospital beds. Many women were shackled and chained, some of them still pregnant, others weak and bleeding from just giving birth. Besides being blatantly unconstitutional, such punitive policies are dangerous and counterproductive because they deter women from seeking critically needed care.

Unconstitutional: The hospital's search policy is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects all Americans from unreasonable searches. Although a limited exception to the Fourth Amendment's requirements of a warrant and probable cause exists when a search policy serves a special need beyond the normal needs of law enforcement, the "special needs" exception has been carefully limited by the Supreme Court. The Court has never applied the exception to excuse a discretionary search policy that, like the search policy here, was created and implemented by police and prosecutors primarily for law enforcement purposes. Application of the "special needs" exception to searches for evidence of crime is not only unprecedented, it would also eliminate the fundamental protection of privacy that citizens are now guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment.

Dangerous: This deceptive scheme strikes at the core of the physician-patient bond, undermining the trust and confidence essential to the critical relationship between health care professionals and their pregnant patients. To compromise the doctor-patient relationship is to compromise care. The result will be damaged health and increased suffering for mothers and their babies.

Counterproductive: Transforming a confidential doctor visit into a sting operation for law enforcement is not only an unconstitutional violation of rights, it is also a misguided and ineffective health policy that only serves to deter women from seeking critically-needed prenatal care. Turning a hospital into a police station undermines the medical privacy rights of all Americans, and is more harmful than helpful to chemically dependent women and their babies. These women need appropriate medical treatment, not jail time.

Substance abuse involves complex factors that must be addressed in a constructive manner. Punitive approaches fail to resolve addiction problems and ultimately undermine the health and well being of women and their children. Further, they ignore the serious shortage of drug treatment programs for pregnant and parenting women and fail to address the overall lack of access to reproductive health care services. Such policies also tend to have a disproportionate impact on poor and minority women.

Every major medical and public health organization in the country opposes punitive responses to prenatal drug and alcohol abuse and supports rehabilitation versus imprisonment. These groups, including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the March of Dimes, recognize that punitive policies deter women from seeking critically needed pre and post-natal care. Unfortunately, few locations have available treatment programs that accept pregnant women. Policymakers, legislators, and those who purport to care about the well being of women and their children must work to find safer and more effective ways to address the needs of women with drug and alcohol abuse problems.

More information at Ferguson v. City of Charleston.