Infants and Drug Abuse
- Share via
In reading your editorial (“A New Look at Drug Use,” Aug. 2), I found at least one thing on which Rev. Jesse Jackson and I are in strong agreement: the need to adequately fund and creatively encourage the growth of prenatal and neonatal health care programs.
Today America is paying a terrible price for failure to prevent a tragedy of truly epidemic dimension--substance abuse by pregnant women. The use of illegal drugs or abuse of alcohol during pregnancy causes cruel suffering and lasting impairment and damage to the hundreds of babies being born each day innocently addicted to drugs or alcohol.
For the record:
12:00 a.m. Aug. 24, 1989 For the Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday August 24, 1989 Home Edition Metro Part 2 Page 6 Column 5 Letters Desk 1 inches; 15 words Type of Material: Correction
Beneath his letter to The Times Wednesday, Sen. Pete Wilson was identified as a Democrat. He is a Republican.
They are the victims of child abuse through the umbilical cord.
It is a tragedy impossible to measure, but thank God, it is preventable. The emotional and physical suffering of these children is something a civilized society cannot tolerate.
That is why I have introduced legislation in the Senate, The Child Abuse During Pregnancy Prevention Act, to create five $10-million grants to states to set up comprehensive programs for the prevention of illegal drug use and alcohol abuse by women during pregnancy.
The act would offer grants to states that:
* Offer a comprehensive approach for the prevention of illegal drug use by pregnant mothers, including preventive outreach, education and treatment
* Provide mandatory rehabilitation to substance-abusing mothers who give birth to a baby who is addicted or otherwise injured or impaired by the mother’s substance abuse during pregnancy.
* Condition probation on abstinence from substance abuse and from association with known drug users, and offer to mothers who successfully complete probation the opportunity to have their records expunged.
* Afford to a mother undergoing mandatory rehabilitation the opportunity to keep her baby with her if the mother is competent to function in a maternal capacity.
More than 30,000 substance-exposed infants are born in California annually at a cost of between $500 million and $1 billion. Even one innocent infant’s suffering is cruelly unfair.
Our response must be more than shaking our heads in dismay. The time has come to stop pregnant substance-abuse and the epidemic of human tragedy it is causing.
SEN. PETE WILSON (D-Calif.)
Washington, D.C.
