Lawmakers vote to exclude women with legal prescriptions from chemical endangerment law


Pregnant Woman


Update: Gov. Robert Bentley signed the bill into law.

Pregnant women taking legally prescribed medications will no longer face possible prosecution under the state's chemical endangerment law - which has been used against at least 480 women who've taken drugs during pregnancy.

The Alabama House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday to exempt women who use drugs prescribed or recommended by doctors or nurses. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Clyde Chambliss (R-Prattville) and passed the state senate last month.

"It's just to clarify the law," Chambliss said. "If a woman is taking a drug prescribed by a doctor, and it unintentionally causes harm to the fetus, she should not be prosecuted."

The chemical endangerment of a minor law was originally created in 2006 to make it illegal to expose children to the chemicals and fumes from manufacturing methamphetamine - but prosecutors later applied it to drug use during pregnancy.

Since the law as originally written did not address pregnancy, it included no guidelines regarding medical treatment. The law could even be stretched to include exposure to drugs from epidurals administered during labor, warned members of the group National Advocates for Pregnant Women.

An investigation last year by ProPublica and found at least 479 cases involving pregnant women and new mothers arrested for drug use during pregnancy. One of the women profiled in the piece, Hanna Ballenger of Cullman, was arrested and charged in 2014 after her baby tested positive for methadone, which had been prescribed to her by a doctor.

Defendants such as Ballenger, who took a plea deal in November for five years' probation, would not face arrest and prosecution if they used a medication as directed by a medical provider.

An analysis of chemical endangerment cases by ProPublica and found that opioid painkillers are the fourth most common drug cited in arrest reports of pregnant women.

The exemption for women taking legal drugs was one of two changes proposed for the state's chemical endangerment law by the Alabama Health Care Improvement Task Force. That group also suggested that all women arrested for drug use during pregnancy first receive court-ordered treatment instead of incarceration.

Alabama is one of a handful of states where women regularly face arrest and prosecution for drug use during pregnancy. Tennessee lawmakers recently ended a one-year legal experiment to make it illegal in that state to use drugs that harm the fetus after experts testified that the law kept women from seeking prenatal and hospital care.

Reporting contributed by Mike Cason

Updated at 8:38 a.m. with a quote from state Sen. Clyde Chambliss