Across Alabama, expectant mothers are ending up behind bars simply for using cannabis. One case in particular, involving a 23-year-old woman, drew national attention this year and reignited debate over how the state treats pregnancy and drug use.
Arrested on the Same Day She Learned She Was Pregnant
Ashley Banks, the young woman from Gadsden, Alabama involved in this case, was taken into custody in May “with a small amount of marijuana and a pistol without a permit to carry,” according to AL.com.
Normally, Alabama law would have allowed Banks to post bail while she awaited trial. Instead, “she admitted to smoking pot on the same day she found out she was pregnant – two days before her arrest. In Etowah County, that meant she couldn’t leave jail unless she entered drug rehab, leaving her in limbo for three months.” Under Etowah County practice, anyone who is pregnant and charged with endangering their fetus by consuming drugs must remain in jail until a drug assessment program is completed – a policy applied without regard for what it may do to the health of mother or child. Over the course of three months, Banks endured a high risk pregnancy, including “severe vaginal bleeding and two emergency room visits,” according to the Washington Post.
The Punishment Doesn’t Stop at Birth
Banks is far from the only woman to face this kind of treatment. The Guardian also reports on Hali Burns, who ended up in the same Etowah county jail, but “just six days after giving birth to her son, with police saying that she had tested positive for a drug used by pregnant women with opioid addictions to help manage cravings and withdrawal.” Despite having just given birth, Burns was charged over medication meant to manage withdrawal from other drugs, leaving her situation with no clear way out.
“When she was thrown in jail, Burns was still physically recovering from giving birth. But the jail had no facilities for her to pump or tend to her wounds. Her partner tried to bring pads and underwear to her, so that she wouldn’t have to bleed into her clothes, but Etowah county authorities wouldn’t let her have them. The risk for infection was great – the indignity was even greater,” The Guardian reported.
Etowah County and the Cost to Women’s Health
The National Advocates for Pregnant Women, a legal nonprofit organization, has described Etowah County as the “ground zero for pregnancy criminalization,” a characterization also cited by the Washington Post. Over the past decade, more than 150 cases have unfolded in the county in which pregnant women were jailed for drug use.
“The prosecution’s alleged justification for this is that this is needed to protect the women’s ‘unborn’ and born children,” said Emma Roth, a staff attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women. “When the reality is: This puts the health and well-being of these women at risk.”
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, The Guardian suggests that conditions in Alabama may worsen further. “The policy in place in Etowah county and elsewhere reveals the warped logic and hateful absurdities of the anti-choice worldview. The movement claims to see embryos and fetuses as persons, and in practice they speak as if these “persons” are not women’s equals, but their superiors: the fetus is conceived of as more important than the woman, more worthy, less tainted by those things that make a pregnant woman so unappealing – her femaleness, her sexuality, her tendency to have human desires and human struggles, like irritation or addiction or anger. In the service of protecting and advancing this superior being of the fetus, the anti-choice movement claims, it is justifiable, even necessary, to steal the freedom of those lesser women.”
Cases like these highlight a growing collision between reproductive rights and drug enforcement in Alabama, one that shows little sign of easing anytime soon.
