Into the Body of Another
In an effort to protect children in the midst of addiction epidemics, some
states are jailing women for using drugs during pregnancy. But is incarceration the best approach?
In a four-bedroom,
white house by the airport in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2-year-old Jacob squirmed
around in Mickey Mouse pajamas, his explosion of poofy black hair
pulled into a topknot. He smiled shyly, pushed a red toy car back and
forth, and shoved his fingers into his mouth. He appeared to be a
typical toddler. Meanwhile, his mother, Amber Briana Smith, was 40 miles
away in Taft, Oklahoma, sharing a prison dorm with dozens of other
women after having pled guilty to neglecting Jacob by using meth while
she was pregnant with him. Three of her other six children were also
born with drugs in their systems. She's seen Jacob just a handful of
times in the past year, she says, and some of her other offspring even
less frequently. (I changed the names of all the children in this story
to protect their privacy.)
Smith, who is African American and Native American, is 33, petite,
and pretty. She considers herself curious and impulsive-the kind of
person who will do something all the way or not at all (a quality which,
perhaps, helps explain both the quantity of her children and the depth
of her drug habit). When she was 10, both of the adults in her own life
were sentenced to prison-her mother's husband for abusing her and her
mother for failing to protect her from him. Smith was sent to live with
her aunt, Jammie Smith, for a five-year period she describes as
"wonderful" and full of "life lessons." Still, medical records show that
she cut herself as a teenager.
After
dropping out of high school, she successfully completed a phlebotomy
course at Career Point College, a local vocational school. However, she
and her family say Smith was never able to actually obtain her license
because she owed $1,000 in student loans for the course. For money,
Smith bounced between stints at Waffle House, McDonald's, and Arby's.
Occasionally, she stripped.
Smith, who has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and
says she also has bipolar disorder, began using drugs around 2007-first
crack and, later, meth. She already had three children by then, and
between 2008 and 2011, she gave birth to three more. Hospital workers
tested them for drugs as soon as they were born, and all three samples
came back positive for cocaine. Social workers suggested that Smith take
parenting classes. She says the social-services agency ran out of bus
passes, and she couldn't find other transportation. Her mother says she
would have given Smith a bus pass if she had asked. In 2010, she says,
the Department of Human Services began to remove her children from her
care. (DHS workers would not comment on her case, citing privacy laws.)
One weekend in 2011, Smith tried to kill herself by choking herself
with a sheet, cutting her wrist with a dull knife, and locking herself
in a hot car. In 2012, she was caught stealing clothes from a Walmart, a
misdemeanor for which she was given a deferred sentence, meaning if she
stayed out of trouble for one year, her guilty plea would be expunged.
It was Jacob, Smith's seventh child, who would be the final straw for
Tulsa authorities. The day before her deferred sentence was up in
February of 2013, Smith delivered Jacob at Tulsa's Saint Francis
Hospital. Both mom and baby tested positive for meth, and the next day, a
DHS investigator interviewed Smith. She confessed to using drugs while
she was pregnant, and Jacob was whisked into state custody.
rest and link to source - http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/05/into-the-body-of-another/392522/
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