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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Ethan Nadelman, and this is Psychoactive, a production

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Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. Psychoactive is the

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Speaker 1: show where we talk about all things drugs. But any

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Speaker 1: views expressed here do not represent those of my Heart Media,

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Speaker 1: Protozoa Pictures, or their executives and employees. Indeed, heed, as

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Speaker 1: an inveterate contrarian, I can tell you they may not

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Speaker 1: even represent my own and nothing contained in this show

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Speaker 1: should be used as medical advice or encouragement to use

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Speaker 1: any type of drugs. Hello, Psychoactive listeners. Today we're gonna

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Speaker 1: go into the challenging and fascinating and sometimes heartbreaking subject

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Speaker 1: of pregnancy and criminalization and the law. We're gonna focus

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Speaker 1: on the US, but since I know about thirty of

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Speaker 1: our listeners are from outside the United States, We're gonna

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Speaker 1: make our best effort to make this both fascinating intelligible

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Speaker 1: to people all around the world to may be interested

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Speaker 1: in this issue. My guest um is probably one of

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Speaker 1: the people I most admire in the world's drug policy

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Speaker 1: reform and really in the world at large. Her name

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Speaker 1: is Lynn Paltrow. She is a brilliant attorney. She founded

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Speaker 1: about twenty years ago an organization called National Advocates for

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Speaker 1: Pregnant Women, and before that had worked at the Center

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Speaker 1: for Reproductive Rights and at the A. C. L Uth

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Speaker 1: Project on similar sorts of issues. We have known one

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Speaker 1: another for probably close to thirty years, and the best

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Speaker 1: way to describe her role and her leadership is that

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Speaker 1: she is the really singular figure standing at the intersection

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Speaker 1: of reproductive rights and drug policy reform. So, Lynn, thank

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Speaker 1: you so much for joining me and my listeners on Psychoactive.

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Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. It's really a privilege to

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Speaker 1: be here and to have had the opportunity to work

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Speaker 1: across issues which are in fact incredibly similar. The war

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Speaker 1: on drugs and the war on abortion, in my view,

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Speaker 1: are essentially the same thing. Well, you know, listen, I

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Speaker 1: should also tell our listeners that this is one of

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Speaker 1: the cases where Lynn and I probably agree, not on

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Speaker 1: but probably about nine of all the issues. So I

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Speaker 1: am going to make you know, a fair minded effort.

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Speaker 1: I gave our heads up to play devil's advocate here

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Speaker 1: because I don't want this just to sound like a

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Speaker 1: love fest between allies, and I want to really draw

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Speaker 1: these issues out as best and so Lenn, I just

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Speaker 1: want to take us back, first of all, back the

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Speaker 1: late eighties early nineties when you and I were both

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Speaker 1: getting going on this and crack cocaine was rampant in America,

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Speaker 1: and one of the major issues in all of this

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Speaker 1: was the so called crack baby, the crack baby women

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Speaker 1: smoking crack. New York Times major story front page, you know,

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Speaker 1: quoting some professor I rich has Not saying that three

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Speaker 1: thousand crack exposed babies are being born each year and

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Speaker 1: he's going to show up into schools and it's devastating

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Speaker 1: their lives. And you know, bring us back to that

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Speaker 1: time for how it looked from where you were sitting. Well.

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Speaker 1: In fact, in terms of criminal law response to the

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Speaker 1: issue of pregnancy and drug use, there were some cases

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Speaker 1: before the crack baby scare. There was a California case

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Speaker 1: in which a woman who had been pregnant with twins

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Speaker 1: was arrested because she had been using opioids. She was

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Speaker 1: using heroin. So it wasn't the original, but the crack

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Speaker 1: baby myth, the claim that there were a group of

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Speaker 1: women and they were portrayed as if they were black

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Speaker 1: only black women were using a drug, despite the fact

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Speaker 1: that they knew or should have known, that it would

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Speaker 1: cause per minent, irreparable damage to their children. And when

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Speaker 1: I give talks, I often use slides from that period

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Speaker 1: of time from Time magazine and the New York Times,

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Speaker 1: and they were quite explicitly racist. Every baby was black,

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Speaker 1: Every mother who used the drug was black. And the

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Speaker 1: question I always had is, if somebody had said, there's

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Speaker 1: a drug white mothers are taking, White pregnant women are taking,

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Speaker 1: and it harms their babies, it reduces their i Q.

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Speaker 1: But the white women are taking in any way, I

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Speaker 1: think the journalists would have said, wait a minute, show

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Speaker 1: me the research. Tell me how you know that it

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Speaker 1: is causing this harm and why these women would be

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Speaker 1: using it. The journalists were extraordinarily willing to repeat information

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Speaker 1: that had no foundation in evidence based research, didn't ask

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Speaker 1: for the proof, and exaggerated it even further, to the

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Speaker 1: extent that years and years later, the New York Times

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Speaker 1: did an apology. The editorial board had to do an

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Speaker 1: apology for furthering and defining this so called crack baby myth.

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Speaker 1: Are there substances that would we love people not to use,

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Speaker 1: whether they're pregnant or not. Yes. At the same time,

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Speaker 1: are they ones that caused permanent, irreparable harm. Uh, The

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Speaker 1: answer is no, and the research never existed to support

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Speaker 1: the claims being made. So Lynn, I think for most people,

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Speaker 1: I've encountered the notion that a woman who's doing that

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Speaker 1: stuff and who's using drugs in that way, UM, it

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Speaker 1: almost seems beyond imagination. And I think that's not just

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Speaker 1: true thirty years ago, but probably even true today that

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Speaker 1: they make that assumption. So I mean, how do you

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Speaker 1: deal with that? I think we have to meet everyone

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Speaker 1: where they're at, and in a country that did see

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Speaker 1: at one point that when women used a little mitter

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Speaker 1: DS two medications that caused actually caused serious damage in

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Speaker 1: the children exposed prenatally. It's understandable that people have concerns

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Speaker 1: about various drugs and other things that pregnant women use

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Speaker 1: or are exposed to. But what's really interesting is which

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Speaker 1: ones we tend to focus on, UH and the level

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Speaker 1: of concern. So, first of all, we had this whole

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Speaker 1: period and probably maybe ongoing whereas a result of government neglect,

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Speaker 1: excessive amounts of leads. Poisonous lead was in the water

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Speaker 1: in Flint, Michigan. Poisonous levels of lead because of government

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Speaker 1: neglect failure to respond. That is actually a drug, a

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Speaker 1: substance that does cause permanent damage, and yet most of

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Speaker 1: our ire is focused on a small number of drugs

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Speaker 1: that have been criminalized and a small subset of the

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Speaker 1: people who use those drugs while they're pregnant. We also

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Speaker 1: have to really understand that there's a distinction, or there

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Speaker 1: are differences between people who use drugs. Just like most

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Speaker 1: people know somebody who drinks alcohol and they're not an alcoholic.

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Speaker 1: Most people, including those who are pregnant, who use drugs,

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Speaker 1: are using them. They're not dependent. But for those people

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Speaker 1: who have a terrible dependency problem, we often assume that

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Speaker 1: pregnant people have like superhuman powers, they should be able

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Speaker 1: to overcome their addiction instantly, or there perceived as intentionally

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Speaker 1: trying to do harm. The good news is that, fortunately,

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Speaker 1: the level of harm that people believe exists by using

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Speaker 1: any of the criminalized drugs, whether we're talking marijuana, meth amphetamine, cocaine,

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Speaker 1: or herron, have not been borne out by the research.

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Speaker 1: The risks that are associated with those substances are similar

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Speaker 1: to actually cigarettes and poverty and other things that have

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Speaker 1: to do with low birth weight and smaller head Cristis

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Speaker 1: circle friends, but fortunately none of the criminalized drugs, for example,

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Speaker 1: cause miscarriages are still births. Miscarriages are pregnancy losses early

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Speaker 1: in pregnancy. Still births are later in pregnancy. And if,

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Speaker 1: in fact, the way I explain it sometimes is if

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Speaker 1: any of those drugs were good at causing pregnancy loss,

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Speaker 1: we'd be shipping them to the people, the pregnant people

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Speaker 1: in the states where abortion in the United States has

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Speaker 1: now been outlawed. And in fact, I was just preparing

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Speaker 1: for this talk, and uh, I was just preparing for

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Speaker 1: the talk that we're having, and I found something posted

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Speaker 1: by UCSF University of California, San Francisco, a very valued

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Speaker 1: provider of health care and research, in which they used

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Speaker 1: they didn't use the term crack baby, but they used

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Speaker 1: other terms that have absolutely been rejected it by every

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Speaker 1: leading medical person in the field. For example, if you

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Speaker 1: use a number of they list a number of drugs,

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Speaker 1: criminalized drugs and say your baby might will be born addicted. Well,

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Speaker 1: no child is born addicted. That's a social definition, a

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Speaker 1: psychological social definition that has to do with drug seeking

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Speaker 1: behavior and a whole bunch of other things that do

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Speaker 1: not describe newborns. And even when newborns have a treatable

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Speaker 1: and transitory withdrawal syndrome which only occurs with opioids, that

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Speaker 1: is again transitory and treatable. It is not addiction. And

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Speaker 1: yet they're still using the word. In fact, if the

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Speaker 1: baby is properly taken care of, just held, held, more swattled,

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Speaker 1: more treated better, maybe given some withdraw medication, that baby

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Speaker 1: is going to grow up and be every bit as

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Speaker 1: healthy as a baby whose mother never used opioids whatsoever. Right, Well, yes,

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Speaker 1: and and I'd like to be able to tell you

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Speaker 1: a story about the correct baby myth. But let me

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Speaker 1: to say, after the crack baby myth became, came the

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Speaker 1: meth baby myth, and came they you know, exposed to

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Speaker 1: opioids myth, that there is a framework that was established

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Speaker 1: primarily on the backs of black mothers, and for people

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Speaker 1: interested in really understanding that, I recommend Dorothy Robert's book

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Speaker 1: Killing the Black Body, a myth that then has been

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Speaker 1: replicated and applied more to more and more people, including

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Speaker 1: a lot of poor white women, who are the majority

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Speaker 1: of those who in recent years have been arrested based

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Speaker 1: on claims of harm or risk of harm by using

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Speaker 1: meth amphetamine or opioids during pregnancy. One of the earlier

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Speaker 1: cases I worked on was a challenge to the Medical

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Speaker 1: University of South Carolina's policy of secretly searching their black

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Speaker 1: pregnant patients for evidence of cocaine use, and if they

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Speaker 1: were positive, they didn't offer them any kind of treatment.

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Speaker 1: They pretended they did, but they actually had no treatment

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Speaker 1: in their hospital anywhere in the Charleston area where they were.

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Speaker 1: They would turn that confidential information medical information over to

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Speaker 1: the police and help coordinate their arrest from their hospital beds,

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Speaker 1: taking them out in chains and shackles near the oldest

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Speaker 1: slave market in the United States, while some of them

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Speaker 1: were still pregnant and others were bleeding, still bleeding from

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Speaker 1: just having given birth. We brought a bunch of lawsuits.

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Speaker 1: One of them went to the Supreme Court. We actually

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Speaker 1: won in having the Supreme Court at the in those days,

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Speaker 1: the U. S. Supreme Court in those days, saying that

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Speaker 1: this was a violation of their rights to be free

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Speaker 1: from illegal searches and seizure since they were being drug

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Speaker 1: tested was really a secret criminal search. After we while

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Speaker 1: we were doing these cases, we actually did focused groups

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Speaker 1: in South Carolina to find out what could we say,

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Speaker 1: what could we teach, what could we offer to help

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Speaker 1: people move away from the rampant mythology about the harms

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Speaker 1: done specifically by the smokable form of cocaine crack and

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Speaker 1: people's reluctance to think about science and think about evidence

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Speaker 1: based research, and what was one of the fascinating things

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Speaker 1: that came out of it. People were willing to support

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Speaker 1: a tax increase for some kinds of treatment. I worry

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Speaker 1: that it was about in their minds, forced treatment, But nevertheless,

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Speaker 1: they were willing to think about treatment versus incarceration. But

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Speaker 1: when we asked, is there any messenger you would believe

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Speaker 1: who told you that there is no such thing as

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Speaker 1: a crack baby? In other words, exposure prenatally to crack

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Speaker 1: does not cause any unique harm or syndrome or anything

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Speaker 1: else that anybody can identify. Would you believe it if

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Speaker 1: it was the governor of South Carolina, if it was

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Speaker 1: the surgeon General of the United States of American We

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Speaker 1: practically said that if if God came down and told you,

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Speaker 1: would you believe it? They all said no, I saw

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Speaker 1: one on TV, I held one, or they were told

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Speaker 1: they held one and the people who we hired to

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Speaker 1: do the focus groups advised us to just not even

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Speaker 1: talk about it, not even address it. But the problem

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Speaker 1: is when people are being prosecuted for something that's scientifically impossible,

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Speaker 1: causing a harm that never occurred, or treating a positive

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Speaker 1: drug test as if it's harm, we have to talk

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Speaker 1: about it, and we have to hope that eventually enough

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Speaker 1: people are willing to listen so that we can focus

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Speaker 1: on real harms, poverty, lead in the water. Right, Well, listen,

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Speaker 1: you know, I mean I was looking at you. You

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Speaker 1: have a whole set of fact sheets on the on

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Speaker 1: the website for National Advocates for Pregnant Women, one that

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Speaker 1: just went up a few months ago, and Prenatal drug

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Speaker 1: and alcohol exposure science refutes media hype and enduring this.

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Speaker 1: So let's before we leave this issue behind, just for

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Speaker 1: our listeners, just to be clear, My understanding is that

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Speaker 1: when it comes to for example, women who while pregnant

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Speaker 1: are using cocaine or using it as serious, even people

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Speaker 1: are addicted in smoking crack or using smoking meth amphetamine,

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Speaker 1: that basically what one finds is that it's not associated

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Speaker 1: with miscarriage and stillborn. You can't or you can't see

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Speaker 1: any causal relationship there, that there is a greater likelihood

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Speaker 1: of the baby being born a few weeks prematurely and

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Speaker 1: of being born with a smaller head and maybe some

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Speaker 1: other little you know, conditions of irritability or whatever, but

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Speaker 1: that as that child grows up, if they're given any

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Speaker 1: sort of proper care like any other kid, that essentially

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Speaker 1: the distinction between that baby at birth and other babies

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Speaker 1: essentially disappears as they grow up. Um, what would you

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Speaker 1: say about that? What's known about the current evidence? I

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Speaker 1: think that's a fair summary. What concerns me is that

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Speaker 1: we tend to focus on the effects of certain drugs

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Speaker 1: and not others, certain circumstances and not others, and those

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Speaker 1: tend to match the idea of individual responsibility, that the

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Speaker 1: health of children in the United States is primarily about

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Speaker 1: the individual circumstances of the pregnant person's life and not

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Speaker 1: the larger environmental hazards they face, poverty, lack of nutrition,

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Speaker 1: lack of access to treatment, including drug treatment if they

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Speaker 1: want it. So, yes, there are some risks associated with

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Speaker 1: the use of various substances, including criminalized drugs, but people

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Speaker 1: often confuse risk with harm, so you if you do

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Speaker 1: a study that finds that there is a risk of

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Speaker 1: lower birth weight an increased risk of smaller head circumference,

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Speaker 1: people then mistake that for your baby will be born prematurely,

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Speaker 1: your baby will be born with a smaller head circumference.

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Speaker 1: And yes, it is true that lots of things babies

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Speaker 1: are born with do not affect their whole lives, as

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Speaker 1: you explained. At the same time, it's still is so

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Speaker 1: easy for people to confuse a risk of harm which

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Speaker 1: means most of the time it doesn't happen, and actually

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Speaker 1: increasing harm. And there is this expectation that the people

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Speaker 1: who get pregnant are going to be able to readjust

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Speaker 1: their lives so that they don't engage in any behavior

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Speaker 1: that anybody at any time in history has suggested risks harm.

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Speaker 1: But nobody can guarantee a healthy outcome. Nobody can guarantee

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Speaker 1: that a birth, a pregnancy will continue to birth. All

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Speaker 1: pregnancies having nothing to do with prenatal exposure to anything

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Speaker 1: end in miscarriage or still birth. And it's sort of

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Speaker 1: tragic that we have a culture uh that focuses on

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Speaker 1: individual blame and the women, the people who are pregnant

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Speaker 1: them selves believe that there must have been something they

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Speaker 1: did wrong or could have done differently that would have

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Speaker 1: affected the outcome. And psychologically that's understandable. We don't want

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Speaker 1: to feel that we don't have control over our own lives,

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Speaker 1: our destiny, our pregnancies. But the fact is there is

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Speaker 1: relatively little that the people can do, and nor and

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Speaker 1: healthcare providers can do to ensure that there isn't gonna

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Speaker 1: be a still birth, miscarriage, or another health problem. So, yes,

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Speaker 1: that information is true, but it's also true about a

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Speaker 1: whole bunch of things, including poverty, which we probably have

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Speaker 1: a lot more control over than uh illicit or criminalized drugs.

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Speaker 1: We'll be talking more after we hear this ad. Basically,

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Speaker 1: if you're looking at women who are living in a

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Speaker 1: situation of poverty, disorderly lies, you know, no access to

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Speaker 1: prenatal care, um that basically you won't see any difference

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Speaker 1: between the mother's living in that condition who do use, say, cocaine,

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Speaker 1: and those who don't. And also that conversely, if you

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Speaker 1: want to take say a mother who's growing up in

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Speaker 1: all those conditions of poverty and poor diet and lack

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Speaker 1: of prenatal care, etcetera, etcetera, and not otherwise using you know,

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Speaker 1: illicit drugs or even other psychoactive drugs. And then compare

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Speaker 1: that with a woman who in fact is living a

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Speaker 1: relatively healthy existence and has access to prenatal care and

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Speaker 1: has good diet, but happens to be using cocaine on

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Speaker 1: a regular basis that by and large, the mother who's

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Speaker 1: otherwise leading a healthy life but using cocaine or heroin

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Speaker 1: is gonna have that much better a chance of producing

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Speaker 1: a healthier baby than is going to be the woman

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Speaker 1: who's living in poverty and using no drugs whatsoever. It

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Speaker 1: really is the broader conditions, and that similarly, as the

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Speaker 1: kids growing up, it has much less to do with

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Speaker 1: their with whether or not their mother used drugs when

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Speaker 1: she was pregnant with them, and a lot more to

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Speaker 1: do with are they growing up in poverty, are they

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Speaker 1: being exposed to violence and ways that reminds them, to

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Speaker 1: emotional abuse, to physical abuse, That those things have a

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Speaker 1: much bigger impact than any drug use does per se.

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Speaker 1: And it's clear to me that the issue of drug

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Speaker 1: use and pregnancy is used purposely as a brilliant distraction

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Speaker 1: that what does trauma do to a pregnant woman's body.

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Speaker 1: What does increase cordials all levels, and those are stress

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Speaker 1: hormones that come from unrelenting racism, daily assaults on your

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Speaker 1: humanity because of the color of your skin. Those have impacts.

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Speaker 1: And if we focus on drugs, on something we claim

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Speaker 1: or allege that a pregnant person is doing, we don't

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Speaker 1: have to address the pervace of weathering impacts of racism.

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Speaker 1: And weathering is a term that refers to the lifelong

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Speaker 1: build up a stress before somebody ever becomes pregnant that

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Speaker 1: makes it less likely that they will have a healthy

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Speaker 1: pregnancy and that they will survive being pregnant, giving her

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Speaker 1: The drug war has, in many ways, and particularly here,

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Speaker 1: been used to keep us from looking at underlying foundational

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Speaker 1: issues that keep people, particularly in the US where there

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Speaker 1: is no universal healthcare, there is no government supported childcare,

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Speaker 1: from focusing on those things because we reinforced not just

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Speaker 1: the specific things like the crack baby myth, but the

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Speaker 1: myth that these are things that individuals alone are responsible.

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Speaker 1: I also noticed it in your materials. There was one

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Speaker 1: really a point that really caught my attention. You pointed

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Speaker 1: out at seventy percent of women take a prescription to

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Speaker 1: rug during pregnancy and in fact take some drug over

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Speaker 1: the counter, prescription whatever in total, but that only about

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Speaker 1: a dozen of all drugs that people are taking have

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Speaker 1: been approved for use by pregnant women, I think in

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Speaker 1: part because of the difficulties of conducting such studies. So

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Speaker 1: I mean it is to say that there's you know,

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Speaker 1: commonly doctors are prescribing things and when women say, if

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Speaker 1: this is this okay to use during my pregnancy, that

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Speaker 1: doctor doesn't really have an answer because there's not real

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Speaker 1: research out there. Yes, that that's absolutely true, and you know,

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Speaker 1: part of it is that it's not just the difficulty

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Speaker 1: of doing the research. It's that there has been very simplistic,

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Speaker 1: if you will, or also sexist views of uh, people

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Speaker 1: who become pregnant, women who become pregnant as not being

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Speaker 1: able to make judgments about participating in research. There's been

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Speaker 1: a real effort to change the rules for research on

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Speaker 1: human subjects so that more pregnant people are included in

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Speaker 1: that research so that we have better information, and we've

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Speaker 1: seen some real harm we uh it seems, from excluding

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Speaker 1: pregnant women from the COVID studies. But the point though

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Speaker 1: is we don't know. People do the best that they can,

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Speaker 1: and we have to also understand that people make decisions

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Speaker 1: based on experience. Women, pregnant women have been using heroin

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Speaker 1: opium morphine for hundreds of years. If babies would be

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Speaker 1: in the thousands, if babies were born with two heads

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Speaker 1: or kidneys on outside of their body, or any of

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Speaker 1: the exaggerated terrifying claims made by some people about pregnant

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Speaker 1: women and druggist, we would know that research about cocaine

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Speaker 1: was actually used more in the seventies by wealthy why people.

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Speaker 1: Then crack was used. Smokable cocaine was used in black

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Speaker 1: neighborhoods during the eighties and nineties, where the cocaine babies

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Speaker 1: from the seventies. We have an attention to potential harms

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Speaker 1: for certain groups of people and an unwillingness to just

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Speaker 1: sort of take a deep breath and say, hmm, what

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Speaker 1: have I seen in my own community? You know? Did

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Speaker 1: I have a drink while I was pregnant? One drink?

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Speaker 1: Did that make my baby have fetal alcohol syndrome? No?

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Speaker 1: And that doesn't mean we replace the experience with good,

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Speaker 1: ongoing scientific research, but it is to say to take

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Speaker 1: that step back and start from a place of wait

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Speaker 1: a minute, not everybody has these effects. My mother smoked

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Speaker 1: through her whole pregnancy. The sides of cigarette packages now

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Speaker 1: say it can contribute to significantly less healthy babies. Well,

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Speaker 1: I'm a nicotine baby. I didn't have those impacts. It's

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Speaker 1: an example of yes, there is research that has a

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Speaker 1: risk factor associated with smoking cigarettes, but you cannot look

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Speaker 1: at somebody smoking a cigarette and say that baby is

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Speaker 1: going to be damaged, that baby is going to be smaller,

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Speaker 1: and their life is going to be affected. What would

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Speaker 1: be the best thing is to find out from the

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Speaker 1: pregnant woman herself, what is it you need? What is

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Speaker 1: it that would help you have a healthier pregnancy. And

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Speaker 1: it may not be stopping whatever she's dependent on, if

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Speaker 1: she has a drug dependency on, but it might be

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Speaker 1: get me housing so I'm not totally stressed out living

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Speaker 1: in a stairwell. Then I came across a line you

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Speaker 1: wrote someplace. You said, since most states criminalized drug possession,

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Speaker 1: not drug use, it's the pregnancy. It turns drug use

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Speaker 1: into a crime, and those pregnancy is an independent element

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Speaker 1: of the crime is imagined by unethical rogue prosecutors, even

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Speaker 1: before the Dobb's decision that overturned Row. And we've been

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Speaker 1: talking about this in one way or another, but just

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Speaker 1: elaborate upon that basic point right there. People often assume

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Speaker 1: that there is a crime of drug use, and while

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Speaker 1: it sort of ends up working out that way, it

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Speaker 1: is possession having it in your pocket, not in your body.

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Speaker 1: I think there's a few states which criminalized quote unquote

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Speaker 1: internal possession. I think South Dakota, UM, maybe a few others,

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Speaker 1: and certainly there are some other countries that do that.

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Speaker 1: But basically it's got to be in possession right on

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Speaker 1: your body, not in your body. And I think when people,

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Speaker 1: because they've gotten so much misinformation when they hear about

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Speaker 1: pregnant when being arrested in using drugs, they think there's

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Speaker 1: a crime, that there's an actual crime of pregnancy and

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Speaker 1: drug use or drug use while pregnant, but there isn't.

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Speaker 1: All of these arrests that have happened have been based

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Speaker 1: on general all drug delivery laws, and they made them

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Speaker 1: about drug delivery to a minor through the umbilical cord

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Speaker 1: or child criminal child neglect, often with penalties much much

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Speaker 1: higher than penalties for simple possession, and it is being pregnant,

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Speaker 1: that pregnancy is itself what triggers the crime. And so

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Speaker 1: once you understand that, you understand two things. One is

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Speaker 1: that we have to understand that there's a delineation among

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Speaker 1: groups of people. So in Oklahoma, for example, or actually

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Speaker 1: also an in Alabama, U if a couple, heterosexual couple

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Speaker 1: are both using marijuana, they're using it to relax, or

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Speaker 1: they're using it to deal with anxiety for whatever reason.

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Speaker 1: The woman, the minute she becomes pregnant, is carrying a

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Speaker 1: fertilized egg, she is guilty of child abuse or chemical

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Speaker 1: endangerment of child, or a number of other laws that

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Speaker 1: carry potential life sentences. And they are in exactly the

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Speaker 1: same situation the boyfriend and the girlfriend. They both all

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Speaker 1: they did was smoked some marijuana or eat some gummies.

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Speaker 1: But the minute she's carrying a fertilized egg, she's a

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Speaker 1: criminal at if she's a criminal number one, and he's

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Speaker 1: not at all. And the crimes for which she is

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Speaker 1: being prosecuted, for example, in Oklahoma, felony child neglect can

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Speaker 1: actually come with something like a forty year sentence. Now

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Speaker 1: in reality, though, and I get the principle here, and

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Speaker 1: what's so incredibly offensive about that. I mean, if one

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Speaker 1: hat it was says how many women today are behind

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Speaker 1: bars for basically for use of a drug during their pregnancy.

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Speaker 1: I mean, I know you've been trying to build a

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Speaker 1: database of ODATH is about prosecutions and arrest and convictions,

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Speaker 1: but is there any sense of how many today are

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Speaker 1: sitting behind bars in the jail or prison for string pregnancy.

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Speaker 1: National Advocates for Pregnant Women is collecting that information. We

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Speaker 1: know that there have been seventeen hundred cases since row.

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Speaker 1: There were only four hundred and thirteen between nineteen seventy

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Speaker 1: three and two thousand and five. All of the other

433
00:28:14,000 --> 00:28:17,000
Speaker 1: ones have been since two thousand and five. Some of

434
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:18,919
Speaker 1: the cases involved a pregnant woman who fell down a

435
00:28:18,920 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 1: flight of stairs, a pregnant women to drank alcohol, pregnant

436
00:28:21,600 --> 00:28:24,680
Speaker 1: women who tend to suicide. Most of them, though, include

437
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: an allegation of drug use, and again sometimes legal medical

438
00:28:29,119 --> 00:28:33,359
Speaker 1: marijuana use or legal marijuana use. Um. But I would

439
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:35,680
Speaker 1: say even as we when we look at some place

440
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:40,400
Speaker 1: like Alabama, there are probably hundreds of women in jail

441
00:28:40,960 --> 00:28:45,240
Speaker 1: or prison because they were pregnant and used any amount

442
00:28:45,400 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: of any criminalized drug. Wow. So I mean, even though,

443
00:28:48,040 --> 00:28:50,840
Speaker 1: on the one hand, off your databases seventeen hundred over

444
00:28:50,920 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 1: fifty years, that's only adding up to about three dozen

445
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:56,560
Speaker 1: a year. But you think in a state like Alabama,

446
00:28:56,600 --> 00:29:00,320
Speaker 1: it actually might be dramatically dramatically higher. In it as

447
00:29:00,320 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 1: a result of a Supreme State Supreme Court legal interpretation

448
00:29:05,680 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 1: of a law that was called chemical Endangerment of a Child.

449
00:29:09,280 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: It was explicitly passed to reach people who took children

450
00:29:13,840 --> 00:29:18,440
Speaker 1: to dangerous places such as meth labs. And there's even

451
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: legislative history, which means legislators voting on this talked about it.

452
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 1: They raised the issue of is this trying to reach

453
00:29:26,160 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: pregnant women? And the answer is absolutely not. The minute

454
00:29:29,480 --> 00:29:33,160
Speaker 1: the law was passed, however, prosecutors in particular states started

455
00:29:33,280 --> 00:29:36,560
Speaker 1: using it to arrest pregnant women who used any amount

456
00:29:36,560 --> 00:29:40,200
Speaker 1: of a controlled substance. We helped challenge it. It went.

457
00:29:40,240 --> 00:29:42,520
Speaker 1: It was one of the few states where we ultimately lost.

458
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:45,440
Speaker 1: It goes to the highest court, and it's an opinion

459
00:29:45,520 --> 00:29:50,800
Speaker 1: that actually uh forecasts row being overturned. It says, oh no,

460
00:29:50,960 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 1: this is Alabama and Alabama, the unborn from the moment

461
00:29:54,480 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 1: of conception are viewed as separate legal persons, so we

462
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: can use the chemical endangerment of a child law to

463
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:08,280
Speaker 1: panelize lock up a woman who uses any amount of

464
00:30:08,320 --> 00:30:12,160
Speaker 1: controlled substance from the moment she becomes pregnant. And that

465
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: law was not interpreted into something like two thousand and six,

466
00:30:15,880 --> 00:30:20,200
Speaker 1: and since then, Oklahoma, Alabama, and a few other states

467
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:24,320
Speaker 1: have really made this a very big part of their

468
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:28,719
Speaker 1: criminal law system. Now you mentioned briefly before, um, you know,

469
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: how do we know these women are using drugs? I mean,

470
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:34,000
Speaker 1: these are mostly not involving cases of people being seen

471
00:30:34,040 --> 00:30:36,920
Speaker 1: in public using drugs. A lot of this is drug

472
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:40,840
Speaker 1: testing in a hospital, drug testing when a woman is

473
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:43,800
Speaker 1: going for prenatal care, and they're good, Let's let us

474
00:30:43,800 --> 00:30:45,920
Speaker 1: be clear. They're good reasons for drug testing, oftentimes to

475
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:48,800
Speaker 1: see what medications somebody is on, to test for certain

476
00:30:48,800 --> 00:30:52,200
Speaker 1: conditions where it might be diabetes or dehydration or things

477
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:55,840
Speaker 1: like that. But obviously this drug testing has been used

478
00:30:55,880 --> 00:31:00,680
Speaker 1: in ways that are not appropriate. Oh at salutely, Well,

479
00:31:00,720 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: let me let me go back and just respond to

480
00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:05,840
Speaker 1: something else and then I'll answer your question. The research

481
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:08,440
Speaker 1: all along said the best thing you can do for

482
00:31:08,480 --> 00:31:11,280
Speaker 1: the baby is what's called rooming in, keep the baby

483
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,680
Speaker 1: with the mother, give the baby breast milk so that

484
00:31:14,720 --> 00:31:18,480
Speaker 1: there's the same weaning through the breast milk cat can happen,

485
00:31:19,040 --> 00:31:24,080
Speaker 1: and weaning from the prenatal exposure, the skin to skin contact.

486
00:31:24,720 --> 00:31:29,040
Speaker 1: And yet there is so much anger and judgment and

487
00:31:29,120 --> 00:31:32,760
Speaker 1: misinformation that the primary thing that was happening in hospitals

488
00:31:32,760 --> 00:31:36,320
Speaker 1: and still does is instantly removing the newborn if there's

489
00:31:36,320 --> 00:31:40,160
Speaker 1: a positive for opioids, calling in if not, the police,

490
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:45,240
Speaker 1: more much more often, the punitive, counterproductive so called child

491
00:31:45,280 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: welfare system and preventing mothers and babies from bonding. And

492
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,880
Speaker 1: that's it's just the most counterproductive thing that can happen.

493
00:31:56,320 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 1: And it is very much about uh, rushing to judgment

494
00:32:02,000 --> 00:32:06,960
Speaker 1: and knowing only how to punish. UM. Now I forgot

495
00:32:07,000 --> 00:32:09,440
Speaker 1: what the question was. Well, I know you're My next

496
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:13,040
Speaker 1: question was gonna be so yes, the question was really

497
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: about the drug testing, because I think you're then jumping

498
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:17,840
Speaker 1: to what happens with the drug testing, But just talk

499
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:21,440
Speaker 1: about that process and why hospitals do that and how

500
00:32:21,680 --> 00:32:24,160
Speaker 1: you know they oftentimes break a confidence with women when

501
00:32:24,160 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 1: they're doing that drug testing for otherwise appropriate reasons. What's

502
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:32,320
Speaker 1: interesting is in other countries there isn't this dependence on

503
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: drug testing for information from their patients. But because we

504
00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: have a now have a billion dollar drug testing industry.

505
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:45,400
Speaker 1: I once got a call from a drug testing representative

506
00:32:45,680 --> 00:32:47,760
Speaker 1: on his way to a hospital. I don't know how

507
00:32:47,760 --> 00:32:50,040
Speaker 1: he got my number, but he did, and he said,

508
00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: I'm going up to talk to this hospital and I

509
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:54,440
Speaker 1: want to convince them to use our drug test because

510
00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:57,280
Speaker 1: it will help them treat pregnant women. I was like, no,

511
00:32:57,440 --> 00:33:01,080
Speaker 1: it won't. It will be used to turn those women

512
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:06,000
Speaker 1: over to police or punitive civil child welfare folks and

513
00:33:06,280 --> 00:33:09,240
Speaker 1: used against them. The thing about drug testing, too, is

514
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 1: it's done without informed consent. People come into the hospital

515
00:33:13,520 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: sign these general consents, but it's not informed consent. Nobody

516
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:18,960
Speaker 1: says if we do a drug test and it's positive,

517
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:20,960
Speaker 1: here all the ways in which it can be used

518
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: against you, and that information actually really there. If if

519
00:33:24,920 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: you find out newborn was prenatally exposed, or a woman

520
00:33:28,480 --> 00:33:32,480
Speaker 1: used cocaine while she was pregnant, there's no particular treatment.

521
00:33:32,560 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: It's not like, oh, we're going to get this information

522
00:33:34,400 --> 00:33:35,880
Speaker 1: and then we can give this baby this drug and

523
00:33:35,920 --> 00:33:39,480
Speaker 1: it's going to cure it. It is only used to

524
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:44,120
Speaker 1: take control over the pregnant woman and the newborns. Now,

525
00:33:44,120 --> 00:33:48,640
Speaker 1: are there state laws requiring that hospitals report results of

526
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:52,360
Speaker 1: drug testing it shows illicit drug use. It's complicated. They're

527
00:33:52,440 --> 00:33:55,560
Speaker 1: different laws in many different states. In the United States.

528
00:33:56,200 --> 00:34:00,600
Speaker 1: Some say, if you discover that they've used sir and drugs,

529
00:34:00,720 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 1: you must report to certain authorities. A very few states

530
00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:10,680
Speaker 1: do mandate testing in certain circumstances. Nobody requires universal testing.

531
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:12,759
Speaker 1: And one of the ways I point out that there

532
00:34:12,760 --> 00:34:15,399
Speaker 1: are two things. One is the baby made have been

533
00:34:15,480 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 1: harmed and there and there's this illusion that you can

534
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:21,680
Speaker 1: do something medical about it, which you can't except for

535
00:34:21,719 --> 00:34:24,799
Speaker 1: babies prenatally exposed to opioids, and the women can tell

536
00:34:24,800 --> 00:34:27,080
Speaker 1: you if they use them. You don't have to secretly

537
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:29,960
Speaker 1: search them for evidence of drug use. And we know

538
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:32,600
Speaker 1: what to do with those babies if they happen to

539
00:34:32,680 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 1: show some signs of neonatal abstinence, syndrome withdrawal. And then

540
00:34:37,440 --> 00:34:39,800
Speaker 1: other people say, well, we need to know because people

541
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:42,040
Speaker 1: who are using any of the illicit drugs aren't going

542
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:44,440
Speaker 1: to be good parents. We have to protect these newborns,

543
00:34:44,440 --> 00:34:49,240
Speaker 1: these children from those parents. But if we really believed

544
00:34:49,760 --> 00:34:54,040
Speaker 1: that evidence of drug use made people bad parents, then

545
00:34:54,080 --> 00:34:57,320
Speaker 1: we would require every parent who drops their kid off

546
00:34:57,360 --> 00:35:00,440
Speaker 1: at public or private school to have a DRU test.

547
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,759
Speaker 1: But we don't really believe that we're using this as

548
00:35:03,760 --> 00:35:06,799
Speaker 1: a mechanism of social control. Just like the drug war

549
00:35:06,840 --> 00:35:11,279
Speaker 1: in general, when it's criminalized, not everybody's arrested. Those who

550
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:16,360
Speaker 1: arrested are targeted, are particularly black and brown people. Uh,

551
00:35:16,480 --> 00:35:19,560
Speaker 1: we use it to control those populations. That's why Nixon

552
00:35:19,960 --> 00:35:23,959
Speaker 1: put these laws into place in the first place. And similarly,

553
00:35:24,120 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 1: the idea that we need drug testing to provide good

554
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:31,319
Speaker 1: health care for pregnant women, newborns, and children really does

555
00:35:31,440 --> 00:35:36,560
Speaker 1: not have uh evidence based research to support it. One

556
00:35:36,560 --> 00:35:38,960
Speaker 1: of the things I often do when I'm giving speeches

557
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:42,239
Speaker 1: is I bring a urine sample cup and I put

558
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:44,719
Speaker 1: my own urine in it, and I take it out

559
00:35:44,719 --> 00:35:46,879
Speaker 1: and I hold it up and I say, look at this,

560
00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:50,160
Speaker 1: this is what is being What this can tell you

561
00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:54,000
Speaker 1: if you test my urine is whether or not I've

562
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: used a drug within a certain period of time. It

563
00:35:56,320 --> 00:36:00,520
Speaker 1: can't tell you if I'm addicted or dependent. It cannot

564
00:36:00,520 --> 00:36:03,040
Speaker 1: tell you if I love my children. It cannot tell

565
00:36:03,080 --> 00:36:05,840
Speaker 1: you if I have made them a priority, and I

566
00:36:05,920 --> 00:36:07,960
Speaker 1: make them dinner, and I helped them with their homework,

567
00:36:08,440 --> 00:36:11,840
Speaker 1: and they are the most important people in my life.

568
00:36:12,360 --> 00:36:15,759
Speaker 1: But it is used all over the United States, and

569
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:21,120
Speaker 1: particularly in the punitive family separation system as a parenting test,

570
00:36:21,920 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 1: and that is not what it's for. M You know, Lynn,

571
00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 1: we keep coming back to the issues of race, and

572
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:30,080
Speaker 1: I mean this is especially true, you know, in the

573
00:36:30,200 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: late eighties early nineties around crack cocaine, because it was

574
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: so powerfully associated with black people in America. But you know,

575
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:38,319
Speaker 1: we also know that I I remember even in New

576
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:41,640
Speaker 1: York City and not right now, but certainly just not

577
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:45,280
Speaker 1: so long ago. You know, basically, women who are pregnant

578
00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:48,879
Speaker 1: and we're testing positive for marijuana, we're having child health

579
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:51,120
Speaker 1: services called in on them and being and getting in

580
00:36:51,120 --> 00:36:52,920
Speaker 1: trouble for that sort of stuff. So we're not just

581
00:36:52,920 --> 00:36:56,400
Speaker 1: talking about cocaine. We're also talking about about even drugs

582
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 1: like marijuana, where the harms associated with marijuana appear to

583
00:36:59,719 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 1: be pretty close to infinitesimal in terms of the health

584
00:37:03,160 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 1: of the baby. Um. But you know, it's also the case,

585
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:08,799
Speaker 1: and I think you've also pointed this out that who

586
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,320
Speaker 1: gets tested, right, it tends to be poor woman women

587
00:37:12,360 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 1: of color, whereas middle class up middle class people aren't

588
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:18,839
Speaker 1: gonna be drug tested in the same way. And when

589
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 1: they are, they're really angry. So uh. There are a

590
00:37:22,120 --> 00:37:26,120
Speaker 1: couple of women who were reported to child welfare based

591
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 1: on positive opiate tests and New York hospitals and they

592
00:37:30,320 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 1: have not used opioids, but they had eaten poppy seeds

593
00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:36,320
Speaker 1: within a certain number of hours before giving birth, and

594
00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:40,040
Speaker 1: poppy seeds can test as positive for opioids, and they've

595
00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:42,920
Speaker 1: been tested for drugs. They don't know it, and suddenly

596
00:37:42,920 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 1: they've just given birth and the baby's whipped away, and

597
00:37:45,520 --> 00:37:49,960
Speaker 1: there's a child welfare worker in their room accusing them

598
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,759
Speaker 1: of being drug users. And because many people who work

599
00:37:53,800 --> 00:37:56,239
Speaker 1: in that system are not very well trained, if the

600
00:37:56,280 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 1: woman says no, I'm not a drug user, they go denial. See,

601
00:37:59,239 --> 00:38:03,760
Speaker 1: you must be really a drug addict. And they're devastated.

602
00:38:03,880 --> 00:38:06,080
Speaker 1: They've just had a baby should be the most joyful

603
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:13,040
Speaker 1: part of their life. And a PW and and particularly

604
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:15,600
Speaker 1: our senior staff attorney M. A. Roth, is working on

605
00:38:15,680 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 1: several cases in New York in which women who falsely

606
00:38:21,080 --> 00:38:25,760
Speaker 1: tested positive for opioids have had their babies taken away,

607
00:38:25,960 --> 00:38:30,200
Speaker 1: whether positive or not, the response should not be punitive.

608
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:33,239
Speaker 1: We need to keep families together. That's the best thing

609
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:37,400
Speaker 1: we can do for children. There are women in Oklahoma

610
00:38:37,480 --> 00:38:41,600
Speaker 1: who are being arrested for felony child neglect for having

611
00:38:42,080 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 1: being licensed medical marijuana users, and women in Arizona who

612
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:51,759
Speaker 1: have been put on the child abuse Registry, which will

613
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:54,319
Speaker 1: prevent them from ever getting a job and feels that

614
00:38:54,400 --> 00:38:56,520
Speaker 1: they the only fields that they've been able to work

615
00:38:56,520 --> 00:39:00,879
Speaker 1: in childcare, social work, child welfare because there was a

616
00:39:00,920 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 1: positive marijuana test for their legal medical use. And I

617
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:11,000
Speaker 1: want to explain that these women in particular suffered from

618
00:39:11,040 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 1: something called hyper emesis gravidarum, which is a kind of

619
00:39:15,160 --> 00:39:19,799
Speaker 1: mourning sickness that is constant throughout pregnancy. If you want

620
00:39:19,840 --> 00:39:23,879
Speaker 1: to see how horrible hyper emesis gravidarum is, you can

621
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:29,000
Speaker 1: watch Amy Schumer's special called Expecting Amy, because she experienced it.

622
00:39:29,080 --> 00:39:34,160
Speaker 1: Now in that fabulous documentary of her pregnancy, there's no

623
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:36,879
Speaker 1: point at which you she talks about marijuana or ever

624
00:39:37,000 --> 00:39:39,879
Speaker 1: uses it. But I will thank her for signing onto

625
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:44,240
Speaker 1: an amicus brief with forty five other organizations and UH

626
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:48,400
Speaker 1: experts in the Arizona case in which the mother was

627
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:52,359
Speaker 1: put on the child abuse Registry for having used some

628
00:39:52,560 --> 00:39:57,319
Speaker 1: medical marijuana to deal with her extreme mourning sickness. You

629
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: know you're reminding that. Recently The New York Times ran

630
00:40:00,560 --> 00:40:04,520
Speaker 1: a story talking about the harms of marijuana use during pregnancy,

631
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:06,960
Speaker 1: and it seems it almost seems like they felt obliged,

632
00:40:07,000 --> 00:40:09,360
Speaker 1: you know, as part of their trying to be balanced,

633
00:40:09,400 --> 00:40:11,879
Speaker 1: you know, in their presentation, to say, well, there really

634
00:40:11,920 --> 00:40:15,120
Speaker 1: are harms here. But I think the actual evidence on

635
00:40:15,239 --> 00:40:18,480
Speaker 1: marijuana and pregnancy, I mean, what is it. Let me

636
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:20,520
Speaker 1: just do two things. One first, I just want to

637
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:24,799
Speaker 1: explain that UM National Advocates for Pregnant Women and Psychoactive

638
00:40:24,880 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 1: recognize that there are trans men and non binary people

639
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:33,440
Speaker 1: who get pregnant, and so we use the terms pregnant

640
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,600
Speaker 1: people as well as pregnant women. Most of the research

641
00:40:36,640 --> 00:40:39,680
Speaker 1: we have available to us has been on pregnant women

642
00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:42,560
Speaker 1: or as far as we know, women who identify as

643
00:40:42,560 --> 00:40:46,520
Speaker 1: cis gender people. So we use all of those terms. Yes,

644
00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:49,960
Speaker 1: in terms of you, no, I agree with that, So

645
00:40:50,120 --> 00:40:52,280
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not trying to if I mostly use women,

646
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:54,080
Speaker 1: it's not to make any statement. It's just a sense

647
00:40:54,080 --> 00:40:56,560
Speaker 1: of fimiliarity. But I agree with exactly what you said

648
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:58,400
Speaker 1: there Land. But yeah, so just go back to New

649
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 1: York Times put that story about are wanted pregnancy? You

650
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:05,320
Speaker 1: know anything there? I mean, if there was, that doesn't

651
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:07,839
Speaker 1: justify any stuff we're talking about. But still for people

652
00:41:07,920 --> 00:41:12,239
Speaker 1: are curious, what's the story? Two? Thanks, Let's start with

653
00:41:12,280 --> 00:41:16,360
Speaker 1: the fact again that pregnant people have been using marijuana

654
00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 1: for thousands and thousands of years. If there was a specific,

655
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:26,280
Speaker 1: unique harm, we would surely have seen it by now.

656
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:31,839
Speaker 1: I think the study you're mentioning in particular involved the

657
00:41:31,920 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 1: claim that they were able to show a connection between

658
00:41:36,200 --> 00:41:40,760
Speaker 1: women who use marijuana with during pregnancy and more anxiety

659
00:41:40,960 --> 00:41:43,560
Speaker 1: in the children that they had, and it it gets

660
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 1: the person who wrote The authors of that research were

661
00:41:46,719 --> 00:41:51,040
Speaker 1: pretty careful about saying, don't use this for anything punitive.

662
00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: But the research was really weak. And we have to

663
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:59,040
Speaker 1: understand that most funding for research about the impact of

664
00:41:59,120 --> 00:42:02,880
Speaker 1: drugs comes from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That

665
00:42:02,960 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 1: if you don't offer to show some harmful impact, you're

666
00:42:06,280 --> 00:42:09,400
Speaker 1: not going to get funded. Number one and number two,

667
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:15,239
Speaker 1: as uh Sierra Torres and Carl Hart's research, their systematic

668
00:42:15,280 --> 00:42:19,120
Speaker 1: research looking at the studies on i Q and marijuana.

669
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 1: They looked at them very carefully, and there will be

670
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,920
Speaker 1: studies that will pull out something that's a cee, there's harm,

671
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:28,319
Speaker 1: But what they found is to the extent, there were

672
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:33,920
Speaker 1: studies that purported to show some statistically significant difference between

673
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:37,400
Speaker 1: children prenatily exposed and those not. They didn't bother to

674
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:40,400
Speaker 1: tell you that those children were all still within the

675
00:42:40,560 --> 00:42:44,360
Speaker 1: range of normal. So we get these studies the and

676
00:42:44,400 --> 00:42:47,720
Speaker 1: the study that purported to show increased anxiety was based

677
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:52,480
Speaker 1: on surveys. It was not a diagnosis of anxiety for

678
00:42:52,520 --> 00:42:58,080
Speaker 1: these children. It was a bare association with the possibility

679
00:42:58,160 --> 00:42:59,960
Speaker 1: that maybe it will do this. And if you read

680
00:43:00,120 --> 00:43:03,120
Speaker 1: the study carefully, it seems like most of what it

681
00:43:03,239 --> 00:43:05,640
Speaker 1: is is a plea for more money to do more

682
00:43:05,680 --> 00:43:10,560
Speaker 1: research on this subject. Let's take a break here and

683
00:43:10,600 --> 00:43:25,480
Speaker 1: go to an ad by the time when are in

684
00:43:25,520 --> 00:43:29,840
Speaker 1: their forties, will become pregnant and have at least one birth,

685
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:34,319
Speaker 1: and thirty three percent will experience a pregnancy. Laws right,

686
00:43:34,360 --> 00:43:38,319
Speaker 1: And I think you said ten to of all pregnancies

687
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: actually do end in miscarriage. And when it comes to

688
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:43,839
Speaker 1: still births, I think the estimate out there is six

689
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:46,760
Speaker 1: and every one thousand, and that means that there's roughly

690
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:51,720
Speaker 1: a million miscarriages per year. It seems to be overwhelmingly

691
00:43:51,760 --> 00:43:56,359
Speaker 1: associated with chromosom o abnormalities and somewhat similar explanations when

692
00:43:56,400 --> 00:43:59,839
Speaker 1: it comes to still births, and it's basically there's no

693
00:44:00,280 --> 00:44:05,560
Speaker 1: evidence to establish a clear causal relationship between any type

694
00:44:05,600 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: of drug use, legal or illegal, and miscarriage or still birth. Right,

695
00:44:11,160 --> 00:44:14,080
Speaker 1: that's the bottom line. That is the bottom line, and

696
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 1: just again just step outside of the typical ways of

697
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:22,440
Speaker 1: thinking about it. If any of those drugs were good

698
00:44:22,480 --> 00:44:26,680
Speaker 1: at causing still birth, women wouldn't need to go into

699
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:29,840
Speaker 1: a clinic to have an abortion. They wouldn't need to

700
00:44:29,920 --> 00:44:33,440
Speaker 1: be trying to access the drugs that are safe and

701
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:37,879
Speaker 1: effective for ending a pregnancy mysa postal and methopriston. They

702
00:44:37,880 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 1: could just go to their local meth dealer and in

703
00:44:40,360 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 1: their pregnancy or the marijuana or the opioid dealing. But

704
00:44:43,360 --> 00:44:48,400
Speaker 1: they don't cause pregnancy losses. But if you have prosecutors

705
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:53,960
Speaker 1: perpetuating the myth that these drugs cause pregnancy losses by

706
00:44:54,040 --> 00:44:58,000
Speaker 1: virtue of arrests of people who have a coincidental still

707
00:44:58,040 --> 00:45:02,640
Speaker 1: birth with their a asianal or dependent drug use. Then

708
00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 1: women might actually try to use those drugs. And we've

709
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:08,719
Speaker 1: had a few cases where women try to use those

710
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:12,239
Speaker 1: drugs well pregnant to kill themselves, and then we're arrested

711
00:45:12,719 --> 00:45:16,480
Speaker 1: for trying to harm the fetus where they were trying

712
00:45:16,520 --> 00:45:20,200
Speaker 1: to end a pregnancy with those drugs. Very few, but

713
00:45:20,520 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 1: the misinformation. If prosecutors are going to arrest women on

714
00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:29,680
Speaker 1: the basis of the myth that certain drugs cause still births,

715
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: actually they're encouraging women to use those drugs. And basically

716
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 1: there's no way that any prosecutor should be able to

717
00:45:37,040 --> 00:45:40,200
Speaker 1: establish probable cause. So it's really all about, you know,

718
00:45:40,320 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 1: locking up women until a court throws it out or

719
00:45:42,680 --> 00:45:45,279
Speaker 1: else finding a court that's going to go along with that. Now,

720
00:45:45,320 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: I guess most of this right has been happening in

721
00:45:47,280 --> 00:45:49,920
Speaker 1: the South in the US, and maybe some parts of

722
00:45:49,960 --> 00:45:51,960
Speaker 1: the middle part of the country, although you did mention

723
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:54,239
Speaker 1: I think one or two cases that happened in a

724
00:45:54,239 --> 00:45:59,640
Speaker 1: fairly conservative county in California. Yes, they actually happened everywhere.

725
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:02,040
Speaker 1: I mean, there is more in some states. The worst

726
00:46:02,120 --> 00:46:06,320
Speaker 1: right now is Alabama, where in fact they were locking

727
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:10,200
Speaker 1: women up who tested positive for drug use, keeping them

728
00:46:10,239 --> 00:46:14,359
Speaker 1: in filthy jail cells, not enabling them to get out

729
00:46:14,400 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 1: on bail, saying that they had to go to impatient

730
00:46:17,160 --> 00:46:21,200
Speaker 1: treatment without even having a drug assessment. Uh and National

731
00:46:21,239 --> 00:46:24,279
Speaker 1: Advocates for Pregnant Women work to get them out just

732
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: on violations of of the bond and bail laws in

733
00:46:28,040 --> 00:46:31,640
Speaker 1: the state of Alabama. But people think that if you

734
00:46:31,719 --> 00:46:34,960
Speaker 1: bring in the state and either punish pregnant women for

735
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:38,040
Speaker 1: using drugs or use the force of the state as

736
00:46:38,040 --> 00:46:40,759
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin, to make them go to some kind of

737
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:45,400
Speaker 1: drug treatment, everything will be okay. Absolutely not all of

738
00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:48,600
Speaker 1: the research, and it is why every leading medical group

739
00:46:48,600 --> 00:46:52,160
Speaker 1: in the country, from the American Academy of Pediatrics to

740
00:46:52,200 --> 00:46:55,879
Speaker 1: the American Medical Association to the American College of Obstetricians

741
00:46:55,920 --> 00:46:59,360
Speaker 1: and kind of coolleges says, do not use punitive measures

742
00:46:59,600 --> 00:47:02,040
Speaker 1: to spawn to the issue of pregnancy and drug use.

743
00:47:02,160 --> 00:47:05,040
Speaker 1: It does not work. In fact, what it does is

744
00:47:05,120 --> 00:47:08,799
Speaker 1: deter women from coming for help. It deters them from

745
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:11,680
Speaker 1: speaking honestly, which is why then you arguing that you

746
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:14,919
Speaker 1: need secret drug testing of these women because they don't

747
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:18,680
Speaker 1: trust their doctors, and it does not put into place

748
00:47:19,360 --> 00:47:24,600
Speaker 1: any services, whether they're treatment, abstinence only treatment or harm

749
00:47:24,680 --> 00:47:28,319
Speaker 1: reduction services that might actually help them, because there are

750
00:47:28,400 --> 00:47:32,160
Speaker 1: women who are drug dependent during pregnancy who are desperate

751
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:35,399
Speaker 1: for help. All sorts of studies saying women are particularly

752
00:47:35,440 --> 00:47:39,000
Speaker 1: motivated to get help that doesn't help doesn't exist. Then

753
00:47:39,040 --> 00:47:41,319
Speaker 1: you're making me think too, because I mean, if you're

754
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:44,919
Speaker 1: pregnant and you want to have the child, or you're

755
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: ambivalent about whether you want to have the child, and

756
00:47:47,680 --> 00:47:50,759
Speaker 1: you're using drugs and you fear you're going to be

757
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 1: drug tested and punished, it actually increases the likelihood that

758
00:47:56,000 --> 00:47:59,400
Speaker 1: the woman will seek an abortion. Absolutely, And we do

759
00:47:59,520 --> 00:48:03,520
Speaker 1: have at least one case where it's absolutely clear that

760
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 1: a woman in North Dakota who had been arrested she'd

761
00:48:07,680 --> 00:48:11,440
Speaker 1: been pregnant at huffing paint fumes, which you know, I

762
00:48:11,440 --> 00:48:13,239
Speaker 1: don't know how down and out you have to be

763
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:16,359
Speaker 1: for that to be the drug you can access. She

764
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:18,960
Speaker 1: gets locked up on a charge I think of a

765
00:48:19,040 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 1: criminal child neglect or child abuse, and somehow manages to

766
00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:28,560
Speaker 1: get out long enough to have an abortion, and low

767
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:31,640
Speaker 1: and behold, the prosecutor drops the charge because there's no

768
00:48:31,760 --> 00:48:36,440
Speaker 1: longer a threat to the fetus. Absolutely, it will encourage

769
00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:39,319
Speaker 1: some women who would love to have their baby to

770
00:48:39,440 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 1: have unwanted coerced abortions. And another issue I wanted to

771
00:48:43,480 --> 00:48:45,759
Speaker 1: ask you about. I saw on your website that you

772
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:49,680
Speaker 1: put out a report called harming fathers, how the family

773
00:48:49,680 --> 00:48:54,480
Speaker 1: court system forces men to regulate pregnancy. Say more about that. Well,

774
00:48:54,520 --> 00:48:57,279
Speaker 1: these are cases in which, in fact what's happening is

775
00:48:57,320 --> 00:49:01,200
Speaker 1: that fathers are being told that they have to control

776
00:49:01,400 --> 00:49:05,440
Speaker 1: the person who is pregnant, the woman with whom they

777
00:49:05,480 --> 00:49:08,480
Speaker 1: were going to have a baby. That it is an

778
00:49:08,520 --> 00:49:13,960
Speaker 1: example of a reversion to a kind of patriarchy control

779
00:49:14,280 --> 00:49:18,440
Speaker 1: over women that we thought we would never see again.

780
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:23,760
Speaker 1: And the way it happens is that baby is born positive. Uh,

781
00:49:23,800 --> 00:49:28,840
Speaker 1: and the new father is charged himself with child neglect

782
00:49:28,920 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 1: civil child neglect. Why because they say he should have

783
00:49:33,719 --> 00:49:37,759
Speaker 1: forced the woman who he got pregnant to go to

784
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:40,760
Speaker 1: drug treatment, and his failure to get her to stop

785
00:49:40,840 --> 00:49:44,279
Speaker 1: using drugs or go to treatment makes him ineligible to

786
00:49:44,440 --> 00:49:48,400
Speaker 1: parent his own newborn. And some of these fathers have

787
00:49:48,520 --> 00:49:50,360
Speaker 1: been represented enough to be able to say, what was

788
00:49:50,400 --> 00:49:54,000
Speaker 1: I supposed to do? I don't have custody over the

789
00:49:54,040 --> 00:49:58,600
Speaker 1: person who is pregnant, that I am responsible for half

790
00:49:58,640 --> 00:50:02,759
Speaker 1: of the genetic material. And yet courts, I think in

791
00:50:02,920 --> 00:50:06,719
Speaker 1: sixteen states and many cases in the state of New York,

792
00:50:07,040 --> 00:50:12,000
Speaker 1: have claimed that fathers are ineligible to have custody of

793
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:17,360
Speaker 1: their own children because they didn't control their pregnant partners,

794
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:21,919
Speaker 1: the women that they impregnated. The fact that there are

795
00:50:22,400 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 1: decisions saying that father should control somebody who was pregnant

796
00:50:26,760 --> 00:50:29,560
Speaker 1: because they were using drugs, it's just going back to

797
00:50:29,640 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: the earlier version of evidence of drug use during pregnancy

798
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:37,080
Speaker 1: means you shouldn't be able to parent your child. They're

799
00:50:37,120 --> 00:50:42,000
Speaker 1: just expanding it to include the dads. Now, you know,

800
00:50:42,000 --> 00:50:44,800
Speaker 1: I'm curious, lit, I mean, we you know, we talked

801
00:50:44,800 --> 00:50:47,719
Speaker 1: about the key racial piece of this thing, and you know,

802
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 1: oftimes people talk about how in recent years, last five

803
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:53,720
Speaker 1: ten years, that with the opioid crisis and it becoming

804
00:50:54,200 --> 00:50:57,120
Speaker 1: so you know, on the present um in kind of

805
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:01,160
Speaker 1: white working class and depressed community ease, that there was

806
00:51:01,200 --> 00:51:03,879
Speaker 1: a kind of softening of the whole drug war mentality

807
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:07,240
Speaker 1: and more support for a health approach, a medical approach,

808
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:11,120
Speaker 1: to harm reduction approach. But in between all that was

809
00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:14,000
Speaker 1: the myth issue. Right If crack cocaine was the thing

810
00:51:14,000 --> 00:51:17,000
Speaker 1: of the late eighties and into the nineties. Meth Amphetamine

811
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:19,799
Speaker 1: was the big drugs thing about the early part of

812
00:51:19,800 --> 00:51:22,319
Speaker 1: the two thousands, before the opiate thing really started going,

813
00:51:22,360 --> 00:51:25,960
Speaker 1: and that was overwhelmingly associated with white people. Did you

814
00:51:26,160 --> 00:51:28,720
Speaker 1: see a difference? I mean, was it just that class

815
00:51:28,840 --> 00:51:32,600
Speaker 1: replaced race. Was there a sense that because these were

816
00:51:32,640 --> 00:51:37,160
Speaker 1: now white mothers that there was a little more sympathy

817
00:51:37,280 --> 00:51:41,759
Speaker 1: or toleration, or was it that same mentality that, Yeah,

818
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:44,120
Speaker 1: race was going to make it that much more vicious,

819
00:51:44,160 --> 00:51:47,360
Speaker 1: but in the end, the kind of drug war craziness

820
00:51:47,520 --> 00:51:51,759
Speaker 1: was just going to carry over to that. Well, one

821
00:51:51,760 --> 00:51:55,160
Speaker 1: of the things that I heard often was, oh, you know,

822
00:51:55,200 --> 00:51:57,759
Speaker 1: it's math that's associated with white people, and then opioids

823
00:51:57,800 --> 00:52:01,760
Speaker 1: is associated with white people and it's much less punitive.

824
00:52:01,800 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 1: Everybody's focusing on treatment. That was largely true except for

825
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:11,279
Speaker 1: pregnant people. And uh, what key are Bridges? Professor Key

826
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:16,719
Speaker 1: Are Bridges at Berkeley Law School beautiful brilliant Harvard Law

827
00:52:16,800 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 1: Review article looked specifically, what does it mean that now

828
00:52:20,719 --> 00:52:25,680
Speaker 1: the majority of women who are being arrested, criminalized for

829
00:52:25,960 --> 00:52:30,799
Speaker 1: being pregnant and using drugs are poor white women? What

830
00:52:30,840 --> 00:52:33,319
Speaker 1: does that say about races? In the United States. And

831
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:36,360
Speaker 1: what she said is, look, the whole idea that it

832
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:39,879
Speaker 1: was appropriate to apply the punitive criminal law system, and

833
00:52:40,000 --> 00:52:42,440
Speaker 1: it would be true for the civil child welfare system

834
00:52:42,480 --> 00:52:46,200
Speaker 1: as well, was built on the backs of black mothers.

835
00:52:46,960 --> 00:52:51,320
Speaker 1: And once it was established that this was an appropriate response,

836
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:55,839
Speaker 1: it's in place, and everybody else gets caught up into it.

837
00:52:55,920 --> 00:53:01,000
Speaker 1: And so it appears that um, while still significant number

838
00:53:01,080 --> 00:53:06,279
Speaker 1: of black, Indigenous and brown women are still captured in

839
00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:12,319
Speaker 1: the criminalization, many many more rural, poor white women are

840
00:53:12,800 --> 00:53:17,320
Speaker 1: being arrested. Wendy Bach has a book coming out about

841
00:53:17,440 --> 00:53:20,840
Speaker 1: what happened in Tennessee. Uh, and we have to remember

842
00:53:21,040 --> 00:53:24,359
Speaker 1: that racism it is as you said, it's also an

843
00:53:24,400 --> 00:53:28,920
Speaker 1: issue of class, but racism plays out and also deciding

844
00:53:29,000 --> 00:53:32,320
Speaker 1: that there are certain white people, so called white trash,

845
00:53:32,560 --> 00:53:37,959
Speaker 1: who shouldn't be procreating, who shouldn't be undermining the supreme

846
00:53:38,000 --> 00:53:42,239
Speaker 1: white race, Those white women shouldn't be having babies, and

847
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:47,120
Speaker 1: they get caught up into the same punitive, counterproductive systems.

848
00:53:47,520 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: As support for drug policy reform has grown and expanded

849
00:53:51,680 --> 00:53:55,480
Speaker 1: and even become, you know, creepingly more and more bipartisans,

850
00:53:55,680 --> 00:53:59,960
Speaker 1: have you noticed more openness to basically an ep double

851
00:54:00,120 --> 00:54:04,200
Speaker 1: use mission among progressive organizations. I think the best way

852
00:54:04,239 --> 00:54:06,040
Speaker 1: I can answer that question is to say, there are

853
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:10,560
Speaker 1: some groups that have become even more supportive and taken leadership,

854
00:54:10,600 --> 00:54:13,839
Speaker 1: And in fact it happens to be your old organization.

855
00:54:13,840 --> 00:54:17,759
Speaker 1: The Drug Policy Alliance, now led by Cassandra Frederic has

856
00:54:18,040 --> 00:54:25,160
Speaker 1: really been very thoughtful UH and intentional about recognizing the

857
00:54:25,239 --> 00:54:29,200
Speaker 1: ways in which drug policy can play out differently for

858
00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 1: pregnant women. So when your organization and the coalition that

859
00:54:34,680 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: finally got marijuana legalization in New York, when that law

860
00:54:39,360 --> 00:54:46,840
Speaker 1: was passed, it included thoughtfully UH provisions that prohibit criminalization

861
00:54:47,000 --> 00:54:51,200
Speaker 1: and punitive civil child welfare actions based on the use

862
00:54:51,239 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 1: of marijuana. When Colorado legalized marijuana, they didn't anticipate that

863
00:54:57,239 --> 00:55:00,279
Speaker 1: they legalize the marijuana and pregnant and you is it

864
00:55:00,360 --> 00:55:03,200
Speaker 1: and they get to arrested and they say, but it's legal,

865
00:55:03,560 --> 00:55:07,600
Speaker 1: but they didn't account for the pregnant people in their state.

866
00:55:07,880 --> 00:55:10,520
Speaker 1: I have to say that I've been disappointed for many

867
00:55:10,640 --> 00:55:15,120
Speaker 1: years that leading groups advocating for the right to abortion

868
00:55:15,800 --> 00:55:20,680
Speaker 1: often feel so vulnerable, so under attack, that they are

869
00:55:20,719 --> 00:55:24,359
Speaker 1: afraid to associate with any other issue will make it

870
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:28,520
Speaker 1: even harder for them to preserve the very important right

871
00:55:28,560 --> 00:55:32,400
Speaker 1: to be able to access abortion health care. But I

872
00:55:32,440 --> 00:55:36,040
Speaker 1: think the bigger missed opportunity is that when there are

873
00:55:36,160 --> 00:55:41,319
Speaker 1: attacks on personal autonomy, on the right to bodily integrity,

874
00:55:41,400 --> 00:55:44,040
Speaker 1: and they can take many forms of the war on drugs,

875
00:55:44,920 --> 00:55:50,040
Speaker 1: attacks on trans people, we actually are stronger when we

876
00:55:50,080 --> 00:55:53,399
Speaker 1: work together when we call it out not just as

877
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:57,759
Speaker 1: an attack on abortion rights, not just as uh an

878
00:55:57,800 --> 00:56:00,880
Speaker 1: interference with the right to use drug but as an

879
00:56:00,920 --> 00:56:06,800
Speaker 1: attack on the very fundamental principles of autonomy and bodily

880
00:56:06,840 --> 00:56:11,279
Speaker 1: integrity and liberty, a word that is explicitly in the

881
00:56:11,360 --> 00:56:16,080
Speaker 1: Constitution that should exist for everybody, including the people who

882
00:56:16,160 --> 00:56:19,600
Speaker 1: have the capacity for pregnancy. Yeah, although sometimes there's appears

883
00:56:19,640 --> 00:56:22,360
Speaker 1: to be an allergic reaction to the words liberty and

884
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:24,920
Speaker 1: freedom among many progressive groups, which I think has been

885
00:56:24,960 --> 00:56:27,759
Speaker 1: a great failing on their part. So the let's just

886
00:56:27,840 --> 00:56:30,120
Speaker 1: turned now to DODS. I mean, I know, you know,

887
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:32,279
Speaker 1: for you obviously, I mean for all of us, but

888
00:56:32,400 --> 00:56:35,280
Speaker 1: especially for you who have spent decades, you know, fighting

889
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:39,320
Speaker 1: for reproductive rights, and you know how heartbreaking the DODS

890
00:56:39,360 --> 00:56:42,960
Speaker 1: decision and the overturning of ROW after fifty years you

891
00:56:42,960 --> 00:56:47,400
Speaker 1: know must be. But basically DoD right was about women

892
00:56:47,680 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 1: who want to have an abortion and preventing them from

893
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:53,920
Speaker 1: doing so, whereas the issues you're mostly been working on

894
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:58,000
Speaker 1: or about women who mostly want to be pregnant. So

895
00:56:58,040 --> 00:57:02,760
Speaker 1: the question is how will Dodds affect the issues around

896
00:57:02,840 --> 00:57:06,160
Speaker 1: the criminalization of pregnancy. Are there are there direct ways

897
00:57:06,360 --> 00:57:10,000
Speaker 1: or is it bc basically in creating a broader atmosphere

898
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:13,120
Speaker 1: that becomes ever more oppressive in terms of women and

899
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:16,120
Speaker 1: their pregnancy. I would have to say the answer to

900
00:57:16,120 --> 00:57:18,640
Speaker 1: that question is both. And I just want to clarify

901
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:22,680
Speaker 1: that although the majority of cases National Advocates for Pregnant

902
00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:25,360
Speaker 1: Women and I have worked on over these many years

903
00:57:25,400 --> 00:57:28,680
Speaker 1: involved pregnancy and an allegation of drug is, I've also

904
00:57:28,760 --> 00:57:33,120
Speaker 1: helped advocate for women were arrested even before Dobbs for

905
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:38,200
Speaker 1: having an abortion or being perceived as trying to end

906
00:57:38,400 --> 00:57:43,080
Speaker 1: their pregnancies through one means or another. What Dobbs says

907
00:57:43,160 --> 00:57:45,640
Speaker 1: is that laws that are passed under the guise of

908
00:57:45,720 --> 00:57:49,800
Speaker 1: protecting so called on born lives should be judged in

909
00:57:49,840 --> 00:57:53,760
Speaker 1: a very deferential way. So if the claim is we're

910
00:57:53,760 --> 00:57:58,480
Speaker 1: going to arrest pregnant people who do anything that risks

911
00:57:58,560 --> 00:58:04,200
Speaker 1: harm to the unborn life. The instruction essentially from the

912
00:58:04,240 --> 00:58:07,680
Speaker 1: majority in Dobbs is you should defer to the state.

913
00:58:07,960 --> 00:58:11,400
Speaker 1: They don't have to show that it serves any compelling interest.

914
00:58:11,840 --> 00:58:14,680
Speaker 1: They don't have to show that they've done whatever law

915
00:58:14,720 --> 00:58:18,280
Speaker 1: they've done in a narrowly tailored way that will actually

916
00:58:18,600 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 1: protect onborn lives. They can just say that's the purpose,

917
00:58:22,520 --> 00:58:25,840
Speaker 1: and basically they've been given the green light. Courts have

918
00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:28,080
Speaker 1: been told to give the green light to going ahead

919
00:58:28,160 --> 00:58:33,040
Speaker 1: and doing it. So it has been absolutely predictable that

920
00:58:33,120 --> 00:58:37,800
Speaker 1: the result of the decision will be much more criminalization,

921
00:58:37,960 --> 00:58:44,000
Speaker 1: if not mass criminalization and incarceration. Now with the four

922
00:58:44,080 --> 00:58:48,280
Speaker 1: million people who get pregnant every year eligible for being

923
00:58:48,320 --> 00:58:51,840
Speaker 1: locked up. Mm hmm. Now, just to make a distinction here,

924
00:58:51,880 --> 00:58:55,960
Speaker 1: there's there's obviously the majority decision by Justice Alito um,

925
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:59,440
Speaker 1: and then there is a kind of separate opinion by

926
00:58:59,520 --> 00:59:03,000
Speaker 1: Clarence Thomas. And it does seem I mean, you know,

927
00:59:03,200 --> 00:59:06,200
Speaker 1: sometimes I don't want to make this sound too horrible,

928
00:59:06,480 --> 00:59:10,320
Speaker 1: but having watched Handmaid's Tale, you know on TV, you

929
00:59:10,320 --> 00:59:14,600
Speaker 1: know that this nightmarish enslavement essentially of women and the

930
00:59:14,720 --> 00:59:17,880
Speaker 1: use of their bodies, you know, to produce, to produce

931
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:20,920
Speaker 1: babies for for the elite, essentially. I mean, I'm not

932
00:59:21,040 --> 00:59:24,920
Speaker 1: accusing Clarence Thomas of that, but say something about Clarence

933
00:59:24,960 --> 00:59:27,439
Speaker 1: tom because there's been times in the past when he's

934
00:59:27,720 --> 00:59:30,160
Speaker 1: written a little, you know, opinion agreeing with the majority's

935
00:59:30,160 --> 00:59:33,160
Speaker 1: own separate thing that then ultimately becomes the majority opinion.

936
00:59:33,560 --> 00:59:36,680
Speaker 1: Tell us about Clarence Thomas, is you on this. He's

937
00:59:36,720 --> 00:59:42,720
Speaker 1: now the senior majority of judge on that court, and

938
00:59:42,920 --> 00:59:46,600
Speaker 1: he has an incredible amount of influence. I do want

939
00:59:46,640 --> 00:59:48,840
Speaker 1: to say that, you know, we think about the Handmaid's Tale,

940
00:59:48,880 --> 00:59:52,240
Speaker 1: but if you think about black women who were enslaved,

941
00:59:52,760 --> 00:59:55,800
Speaker 1: that was the epitome of the Handmaid's Tale. They were

942
00:59:55,960 --> 00:59:59,840
Speaker 1: used to reproduce more slaves, and that became even clearer

943
01:00:00,040 --> 01:00:04,600
Speaker 1: when the slave trade itself was stopped. So they were raped,

944
01:00:04,760 --> 01:00:08,280
Speaker 1: they were put into situations where they were forced to

945
01:00:08,320 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 1: become pregnant so there would be more slaves. This is

946
01:00:11,800 --> 01:00:16,400
Speaker 1: nothing new in the United States of America. What's interesting

947
01:00:16,680 --> 01:00:19,840
Speaker 1: is that nothing that we're starting to see states talking

948
01:00:19,880 --> 01:00:23,760
Speaker 1: about arresting women for murder, for having abortions, states talking

949
01:00:23,800 --> 01:00:26,840
Speaker 1: about keeping them from leaving the state to have an abortion.

950
01:00:27,280 --> 01:00:31,760
Speaker 1: All of that was completely predictable, particularly from the cases

951
01:00:31,880 --> 01:00:35,280
Speaker 1: involving pregnancy and allegations of drug use. But during the

952
01:00:35,440 --> 01:00:40,800
Speaker 1: oral argument in Dobbs, Justice Thomas actually did not ask

953
01:00:40,840 --> 01:00:45,880
Speaker 1: any questions about outlawing abortion or the consequences of abortion. Rather,

954
01:00:46,200 --> 01:00:50,520
Speaker 1: he actually asked the lawyers challenging the Mississippi law limiting

955
01:00:50,560 --> 01:00:57,400
Speaker 1: abortion questions about the state's power to arrest drug using women. Uh.

956
01:00:57,480 --> 01:01:01,440
Speaker 1: He said that he claimed that in some cases that

957
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court had addressed women, pregnant women were being

958
01:01:04,960 --> 01:01:09,600
Speaker 1: arrested in South Carolina, and he's only concerned was could

959
01:01:09,760 --> 01:01:14,840
Speaker 1: they be arrested earlier in pregnancy before field viability, assuming

960
01:01:14,960 --> 01:01:17,520
Speaker 1: which was wrong, that it was perfectly legal to have

961
01:01:17,600 --> 01:01:21,800
Speaker 1: them arrested after viability. And so he's made very clear

962
01:01:22,000 --> 01:01:25,680
Speaker 1: his position that the criminal law is an appropriate use

963
01:01:26,000 --> 01:01:30,760
Speaker 1: and appropriate response two issues relating to pregnancy, not limited

964
01:01:30,760 --> 01:01:35,920
Speaker 1: to drug use, and certainly extending to abortion. So, Lynn,

965
01:01:36,160 --> 01:01:39,240
Speaker 1: how are you feeling about the future. I mean, are

966
01:01:39,320 --> 01:01:42,960
Speaker 1: you hopeful that there will be a reaction of political

967
01:01:43,000 --> 01:01:46,640
Speaker 1: reaction in the states? Uh, you know, to what the

968
01:01:46,680 --> 01:01:50,240
Speaker 1: Supreme Court has done. Do you feel that the arguments

969
01:01:50,240 --> 01:01:55,120
Speaker 1: around criminalization of pregnancy outcomes and pregnant drugs used during pregnancy.

970
01:01:55,480 --> 01:02:00,320
Speaker 1: Is is you know that people are becoming more enlightened. Um,

971
01:02:00,440 --> 01:02:02,560
Speaker 1: what's your what's your feeling here? You've been working on

972
01:02:02,600 --> 01:02:07,480
Speaker 1: this for three decades or something, Well, a couple of things.

973
01:02:07,240 --> 01:02:10,280
Speaker 1: My reaction is, of course, I think I've been in

974
01:02:10,400 --> 01:02:17,160
Speaker 1: some kind of deep mourning and grief about Dobbs. At

975
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:20,880
Speaker 1: the same time, I have gone back and read and

976
01:02:20,920 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: reread Frederick Douglas's speech in the aftermath of the dread

977
01:02:25,120 --> 01:02:29,400
Speaker 1: Scott decision, and that was the Supreme Court's decision purporting

978
01:02:29,440 --> 01:02:32,360
Speaker 1: to uphold once and for all slavery in the United

979
01:02:32,400 --> 01:02:37,680
Speaker 1: States of America, and Frederick Douglas gave this incredible speech

980
01:02:37,720 --> 01:02:41,000
Speaker 1: about how we do not have to look at that

981
01:02:41,080 --> 01:02:44,880
Speaker 1: decision as the end, that the Supreme Court is not

982
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:48,560
Speaker 1: the last word on the freedom and humanity of black

983
01:02:48,640 --> 01:02:51,480
Speaker 1: people in the United States. And that is true. It

984
01:02:51,560 --> 01:02:54,840
Speaker 1: is not the last decision, the last word on the

985
01:02:54,920 --> 01:02:58,000
Speaker 1: humanity and status of the people you can get pregnant.

986
01:02:58,080 --> 01:03:01,320
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of the channel lenge post Obs,

987
01:03:01,600 --> 01:03:04,120
Speaker 1: is that much of the response the decision itself and

988
01:03:04,160 --> 01:03:06,680
Speaker 1: the response to it is as if it's only about

989
01:03:06,720 --> 01:03:11,240
Speaker 1: abortion rights. No, it is about the personhood status of

990
01:03:11,280 --> 01:03:14,720
Speaker 1: the people who get pregnant, whose person who has not

991
01:03:14,840 --> 01:03:18,680
Speaker 1: even yet been fully recognized by the Supreme Court. As

992
01:03:18,720 --> 01:03:23,120
Speaker 1: people have more personal experience, I've had the privilege of

993
01:03:23,160 --> 01:03:28,280
Speaker 1: being the lawyer on a lot of cases where horrendous, dehumanizing,

994
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:32,440
Speaker 1: counterproductive things have been done two pregnant women. I haven't

995
01:03:32,440 --> 01:03:35,960
Speaker 1: had to experience that myself, but I've been close to it. Now,

996
01:03:36,680 --> 01:03:39,400
Speaker 1: so many other people will be too, and that will

997
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:43,760
Speaker 1: motivate them to take action. We know that before Roe v. Wade,

998
01:03:44,120 --> 01:03:46,920
Speaker 1: it was estimated that from two hundred thousand to a

999
01:03:47,000 --> 01:03:51,160
Speaker 1: million women each year had illegal abortions, and that a

1000
01:03:51,200 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 1: million a year is about what it is today. A

1001
01:03:54,480 --> 01:03:57,720
Speaker 1: quarter of the women who get pregnant approximately each year

1002
01:03:58,640 --> 01:04:01,920
Speaker 1: seek to end their pregnant sees. All of them, All

1003
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:05,040
Speaker 1: the women who suffer miscarriages and still births, All of

1004
01:04:05,080 --> 01:04:07,360
Speaker 1: the people who find that when they go to give

1005
01:04:07,560 --> 01:04:12,640
Speaker 1: birth they can be threatened with force surgery or child

1006
01:04:12,760 --> 01:04:16,040
Speaker 1: removal based on something they did or didn't do during pregnancy.

1007
01:04:16,200 --> 01:04:18,280
Speaker 1: All of those people are going to have to think

1008
01:04:19,000 --> 01:04:22,480
Speaker 1: very differently today about what they have to do to

1009
01:04:22,600 --> 01:04:26,320
Speaker 1: ensure their rights and the rights of their children and

1010
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:30,600
Speaker 1: loved ones. And I know that as hard a period

1011
01:04:30,600 --> 01:04:33,440
Speaker 1: of time as this is, it is also a time

1012
01:04:33,680 --> 01:04:39,800
Speaker 1: in which the fight for equality, equity for the women

1013
01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:43,680
Speaker 1: and the people who become pregnant will be re energized

1014
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:47,160
Speaker 1: and resurgent. M hm. Well, Lynn, I there, I so

1015
01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:50,120
Speaker 1: much you know value you know, not just our friendship,

1016
01:04:50,160 --> 01:04:53,120
Speaker 1: of course, but also your incredible work over all these decades.

1017
01:04:53,200 --> 01:04:55,240
Speaker 1: And I very much hope and believe that you're right

1018
01:04:55,280 --> 01:04:57,880
Speaker 1: to in your concluding words. So thank you ever so

1019
01:04:57,960 --> 01:05:02,040
Speaker 1: much for joining me and my listeners on Psychoactive, and

1020
01:05:02,160 --> 01:05:05,880
Speaker 1: thank you for your leadership and support for all these years.

1021
01:05:06,760 --> 01:05:17,600
Speaker 1: My pleasure. If you're enjoying Psychoactive, please tell your friends

1022
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:19,640
Speaker 1: about it, or you can write us a review at

1023
01:05:19,680 --> 01:05:23,160
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We love

1024
01:05:23,200 --> 01:05:25,680
Speaker 1: to hear from our listeners. If you'd like to share

1025
01:05:25,720 --> 01:05:28,440
Speaker 1: your own stories, comments and ideas, then leave us a

1026
01:05:28,480 --> 01:05:34,000
Speaker 1: message at one eight three three seven seven nine sixty

1027
01:05:34,520 --> 01:05:38,760
Speaker 1: that's eight three three psycho zero, or you can email

1028
01:05:38,880 --> 01:05:42,280
Speaker 1: us at Psychoactive at protozoa dot com, or find me

1029
01:05:42,320 --> 01:05:45,360
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Ethan natal Man. You can also find

1030
01:05:45,360 --> 01:05:49,560
Speaker 1: contact information in our show notes. Psychoactive is a production

1031
01:05:49,600 --> 01:05:53,120
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio and Protozoa Pictures. It's hosted by

1032
01:05:53,160 --> 01:05:57,480
Speaker 1: me Ethan Nadelman. It's produced by noha'm osband and Josh Stain.

1033
01:05:57,800 --> 01:06:01,760
Speaker 1: The executive producers are Dylan gold Then, Ari Handel, Elizabeth

1034
01:06:01,800 --> 01:06:05,560
Speaker 1: Geesus and Darren Aronofsky from Protozolla Pictures, Alex Williams and

1035
01:06:05,600 --> 01:06:08,680
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick from My Heart Radio and me Ethan Nadelman.

1036
01:06:09,160 --> 01:06:12,960
Speaker 1: Our music is by Ari Blusien and his special thanks

1037
01:06:13,040 --> 01:06:27,720
Speaker 1: to a Bio Sef Bianca Grimshaw and Robert Deep. Next week,

1038
01:06:27,960 --> 01:06:31,800
Speaker 1: perhaps my most famous guest to date Chelsea Handler, the

1039
01:06:31,800 --> 01:06:35,960
Speaker 1: famous comedian, actress, author and talk show host. We'll be

1040
01:06:35,960 --> 01:06:39,880
Speaker 1: talking all about her and drugs. So I just kind

1041
01:06:39,880 --> 01:06:42,000
Speaker 1: of got my whole family on board with edibles. We

1042
01:06:42,040 --> 01:06:45,480
Speaker 1: go to Whistler, Canada each year to ski for Christmas,

1043
01:06:45,720 --> 01:06:49,440
Speaker 1: and they started baking us cannabis infused cookies up there

1044
01:06:50,080 --> 01:06:53,480
Speaker 1: about ten or eleven years ago, and we just started

1045
01:06:53,480 --> 01:06:56,400
Speaker 1: handing them out before we went to dinner, and it

1046
01:06:56,600 --> 01:06:59,720
Speaker 1: made our family vacations just not much more fun. We

1047
01:06:59,800 --> 01:07:02,440
Speaker 1: all just seemed to get along great, have great times.

1048
01:07:02,680 --> 01:07:05,280
Speaker 1: And then We just developed this great affinity for cannabis.

1049
01:07:05,320 --> 01:07:08,160
Speaker 1: So yeah, I serve it up every every Christmas. Now

1050
01:07:08,400 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 1: subscribe to Cycleactive Now see it, don't miss it.