Developments and Issues 1, 1990

Issuesin Reproductive and Genetic Engineering, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 51–69, 1990 0958-6415/90 $3.00 + .00 Printed in the USA. Copyright © 1990 Pergamon Press plc CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS AND ISSUES: A SUMMARY CYNTHIA dE WIT Linneavagen 5, S-141 41 Huddinge, Sweden and GENA COREA Institute on Women and Technology, P.O. Box 338, North Amherst, MA 01059, USA. BIRTH REGULATION Laws against “fetal abuse” which attempt to control pregnant women may Mother to be tried as “drug-pusher” be unconstitutional because they violate a following birth of her cocaine-exposed woman’s rights to due process and infant privacy, Martha A. Field, Professor of A Florida (U.S.) woman who gave Law at Harvard Law School, said at the birth to a cocaine-exposed baby in annual meeting of the American Society November 1988 has been jailed awaiting of Law and Medicine. trial on felony drug charges. “Forced cesarean sections are the most The mother, Toni Hudson, 29, gave common manifestation of movement birth to a son who tested positive for toward greater control of pregnant cocaine exposure on a urine drug screen. women,” Ob. Gyn News reported. “ . The case was reported to the state child Another potential area of enforced control abuse registry and after investigation, the of the mother concerns women who do infant was placed in foster care. not follow all of their physicians’ orders Hudson was arrested in December and during pregnancy.” charged with child abuse and possession In the widely publicized Pamela Rae and delivery of a controlled substance to a Stewart case a California woman was minor. She is being held in the county jail. prosecuted in 1987 for behavior that In an interview with reporter Sarah allegedly led to her son being born with Ahmann, Jeff Deen, the Seminole County brain damage and eventually dying. She Assistant State Attorney who is was accused of using drugs during prosecuting the case, said that the mother pregnancy, having sex with her husband is charged with “possession” of cocaine contrary to doctor’s orders, and “in her system.” disobeying her doctor’s instruction that “Delivery,” defined in the law as the she come to the hospital immediately if transfer of drug from one person to bleeding began. another, is being applied to mean the After this case, state legislators began placental transfer of the drug from mother to consider enacting explicit laws to to fetus, he said. control the woman during pregnancy, “It’s a drug-pusher statute . [that Field said. has] never been applied in this way . While this legal development has not [but] I think it fits,” Deen told the fully come to pass, Field said, “such laws reporter. have sufficient popularity–and the prosecutions, child removals, and even SARAH AHMANN. March 1, 1989. Mother to be tried for exposing fetus to detentions of pregnant women are becoming sufficiently frequent—that it is cocaine. Ob. GynNews. 24(5): 1. not too early to prepare a defense against Laws against so-called “fetal abuse” may them.” prove unconstitutional 53 54 CYNTHIA DE WIT AND GENE COREA Laws proscribing “fetal abuse” may hysteroscopic sterilization will probably prove unconstitutional. 1989. Ob. Gyn become available within the next two News. 24(2). years, according to Franklin D. Loffer of the Phoenix Surgicenter. Teenage women paid a dollar a day not to The Ovabloc plugs are currently being become pregnant marketed in Europe and are undergoing Three Denver, Colorado (US) health scrutiny by the U.S. Food and Drug and hospital clinics have participated in Administration. The data look favorable, the Dollar-a-Day program that pays teens Loffer said at the annual meeting of the $7 each week they do not become American Association of Gynecologic pregnant. In addition, the women must Laparoscopists. attend one-hour group sessions one day a The plugs have a preformed tip which week. is inserted into the tube. Then liquid The program was conceived by Jeffry silicon is injected inside and a dumbbell- Dolgan, Ph.D., Chief of Psychology at shaped plug is formed at the other end. Denver’s Children’s Hospital. Dr. Philip G. Brooks of the University “I thought if I could isolate a high-risk of Southern California School of group –low economic, low education, low Medicine in Los Angeles cautioned that occupational achievement, and low the hysteroscopic sterilizations take longer aspiration–and document [the program’sl to perform than those done by effectiveness, other areas could pick up laparoscopy, that they seem to have a the Dollar-a-Day project,” Dolgan told higher rate of complications, albeit minor Ob. Gyn News. ones, and that the pregnancy rate is no The program began in an Hispanic better than for laparoscopic procedures – section of Denver. about 6 per 1,000. It was necessary to overcome some cultural barriers to work effectively with Ob. Gyn News. February 1, 1989. this first set of women. “These kids really Injectable silicon plugs for sterilization want these babies,” Dolgan said. may be available soon. 24(3):9. The program is an attempt to delay a second pregnancy until these young IN VITRO FERTILIZATION mothers are older. Estranged U.S. couple battle over seven “This year a million teenage girls will human eggs fertilized in IVF program become pregnant,” Ob. Gyn News An estranged couple’s battle over the reported. “In 1983 it was estimated that control of eggs fertilized in an IVF each teenage pregnancy costs taxpayers program went to trial in State Circuit $13,000-$ 18,000 a year for food stamps, Court in Maryville, Tennessee August 7, welfare, and Medicaid. In contrast, the 1989. At issue is whether Mary Sue Dollar-a-Day program costs about $600 a Davis, 28, can seek implantation of the year per girl, including administration and embryos, fertilized by her husband’s the dollar payouts.” sperm, to try to become pregnant. Mrs. The program has been compared with Davis is a former service representative the subsidy that farmers receive not to for a Knoxville boat dealer. grow crops. Her husband, Junior Lewis Davis, a DIANA COPSEY. 1988. Teens paid a refrigeration technician, says he has a dollar a day not to become pregnant. Ob. right to control his own reproduction. He Gyn News. 24(8). is suing for veto power over the use of the embryos. Davis, 30, says that for now he “Ovabloc” plugs for blocking fallopian has no desire to become a father. tubes and sterilizing women may soon be Meanwhile, the IVF physician available involved, Dr. I. Ray King, is Injectable silicon plugs for recommending that the frozen embryos Current Developments 55 remain in his control. Later they would be Clifford, her husband’s attorney, said: donated anonymously to an infertile “Our point is that nothing that Mrs. Davis couple, he states. has been through gives her the right to Charles Clifford, Davis’ lawyer, said: compel Mr. Davis to be a father, to “The position of Junior Lewis Davis is deprive him of his rights. To tell Mr. that no disposition of the pre-embryo Davis that he doesn’t matter in this at a should be made until he and Mary Davis time when we are trying to make fathers agree that their rights in this very unique equal partners to and responsible in the material are joint and equal.” reproductive process is somehow not “Judge W. Dale Young must decide if right.” the embryos deserve consideration as a When the custody, rather than potential child and therefore choose who property, approach is taken to the issue, would better serve the interests of a child, commented Arthur Caplan, director of the or if the embryos should be considered Center for Biomedical Ethics at the property and settled as in a regular University of Minnesota, “. the question property dispute,” The New York Times is what greater right does Mrs. Davis have reported. than Mr. Davis, since this kind of embryo John A. Robertson, a law professor at can theoretically be implanted in any the University of Texas and a member of woman’s uterus? We have some problems the American Fertility Society’s ethics here.” committee on the new reproductive In an editorial on the case, The New technologies, testified at the trial that the York Times commented: “Mrs. Davis has case should be decided in favor of the one said she neither wishes to force anything who would be hurt worst by losing: the on her husband nor take anything–child husband. Mary Sue Davis, he said, can try support included-from him . Mr. Davis another IVF program if she loses, which says he is being ‘raped of my reproduction would be less of a burden on her than rights,’ and that the fate of the eggs ‘is a unwanted parenthood would be on Junior joint decision.’ And it is understandable Lewis Davis. that he might have strong feelings of The eggs, Mrs. Davis said shortly after fatherhood even in the absence of the divorce suit was filed in February, financial and legal obligations. However, were the result of years of surgery, tests there would be no joint decision involved and injections. They were her best chance if Mrs. Davis were pregnant and wanted of having a child, she added. to abort: the decision would be hers alone. She had five tubal pregnancies after “A law professor from the University the marriage in 1979, she said, resulting in of Texas suggests that Mrs. Davis find the rupture of one fallopian tube and the herself another [sperm] donor. But in view tying of the other. Then she entered the of her medical history, and the emotional IVF program run by Dr.

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