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In January 2002, 3-month-old Jacob Wesley Smith was
discovered dead in his mother’s home in Mead Valley, California,
about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Finding no sign of trauma or
disease, the coroner ruled the cause sudden infant death syndrome.
SIDS is a catchall finding for babies who die for no
apparent reason and is not a conclusive diagnosis. So it was for
Jacob until toxicology reports returned, showing the infant died of
a methamphetamine overdose. Being too young to crawl or feed
himself, with a blood concentration beyond what might have come from
second-hand smoke, investigators concluded the lethal dose could
only have come from drinking his mother’s breast milk.
Amy Prien, 30, an unmarried mother with three other
children, admitted a history of drug abuse to a
Los Angeles Times reporter but denied using methamphetamine
during her pregnancy or while breast feeding. She claims to have
already weaned the child, and theorizes a male former roommate must
have permitted the 3-month-old to consume the drug. How that might
have happened is unclear. Riverside County authorities admit they
either lost or erroneously destroyed a bottle found near the infant,
and the coroner could not determine whether a milky fluid in his
stomach was breast milk or formula. Either way, there’s no smoking
bottle.
The district attorney didn’t buy Prien’s “roommate”
story and charged her with second-degree murder; the trial is
expected to begin in February 2003. To find murder two, the jury
will have to be convinced that Prien both used the drug and knew her
actions could kill her child. Three California women have been
tried for murder under similar circumstances and so far the score is
druggies three, babies zero.
This case is hardly a slam-dunk, though prosecutors
might well make the argument that Jacob died of poisoned breast milk
from a drug-addled mother given the lack of plausible alternatives
and the woman’s history. Proving what someone does or doesn’t know
is another matter, thus the acquittals in other cases.
Not that it can’t be done. According to The Los Angeles
Times story, prosecutors believe Prien’s denial of drug use while
breast-feeding shows she knew it was harmful – if they can prove she
did it anyway. If a credible witness or other evidence pops up,
Prien’s attorney may have to scrap the time-tested “I didn’t know
crank was bad for babies” strategy and whip up something else.
Let me propose the “choice defense.” It goes like
this: If it can be shown that a mother has used drugs while
breast-feeding, all she has done is make a choice over her own
body. To make that illegal, or more so than drug use by anyone else
at any other time, is to single out women for discriminatory
treatment. Women who use drugs should not be more severely punished
than men for any reason, and until men start breast-feeding they
have no right to suggest otherwise.
The fact that the baby in this case was 3 months old is
irrelevant. Abortion proponents gave up the “nonviable tissue mass”
argument in favor of choice after technology was developed to
measure fetal heartbeat 18 days after conception and brain waves at
40, so the legal theory is established. Who’s to say the interests
of a 3-month-old baby, which is no more able to survive
independently than a fetus, should trump a woman’s right to control
her own body?
I’m not joking; it’s no laughing matter. If brainwaves
and a heartbeat do not a human being make, choice for crank moms
only makes sense. Either that or it’s time to reconsider what we
have come to think of as choice. And sense. |
