Today we urged the Supreme Court to rule in Ferguson v. City of Charleston that pregnant women have the same constitutional rights as other Americans, and therefore cannot be searched for evidence of a crime in their doctors' offices. This case is about the confidentiality of every American's medical information, the privacy of a patient's relationship with her doctor and whether doctors can work in collusion with the police without your knowledge or consent.

Besides being an unconstitutional violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects all citizens from unreasonable searches, The Medical University of South Carolina's (MUSC) drug search policy undermined the doctor-patient relationship and ultimately endangered the health of women and their babies. These tests were taken to find evidence of a crime. The doctors in this case worked directly with the police to arrest women right out of their hospital beds, in some cases still bleeding and in pain from childbirth. All the women testified that the policy was detrimental to them and left them afraid of their doctors and afraid of seeking medical care.

Every major medical organization, including the American Medical Association (AMA) and the March of Dimes, opposes this kind of punitive policy as dangerous and counterproductive. Health care providers know that such policies drive women away from seeking the medical care they desperately need. No one wants a pregnant woman to do anything that is harmful to herself or her fetus, but the one thing we know about drug addiction is that punitive policies do more harm than good. Doctors should act like doctors, not like police officers.

We agree with the American Medical Association that this was a shocking abuse of police and government power. We have very different standards for law enforcement searches and for other types of searches under our Constitution. We hold law enforcement to a much higher standard in order to prevent an abuse of their power and discretion. This policy is a perfect example of an abuse of that discretion. The policy was only applied at the one hospital in Charleston that treated low-income patients; it was not applied at any private hospitals in South Carolina. If you were wealthy and had private insurance and tested positive for cocaine you were treated medically. If you were poor and on Medicaid and tested positive for cocaine you were arrested.

MUSC had an opportunity to help, yet they chose to harm and erect a barrier of fear and apprehension that has lasting effects on women who would otherwise voluntarily seek care. MUSC never even tried to implement a medical model to address the problems of addiction, but rather went directly to a law enforcement model.

What the plaintiffs are asking the Court to do is simple: guarantee that drug dependent women who seek medical care are able, like the rest of us, to talk confidentially about their health problems. Only then will they trust that treatment might help them, not hurt them.

More information at: Ferguson v. City of Charleston