Marijuana use during pregnancy

....common -- but dangerous?

We’re leading off today with a story out of Arizona — a state Supreme Court decision upholding a lower appellate court decision that marijuana use during pregnancy does not constitute child abuse or neglect. The case involved a former Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS) employee, Lindsay Ridgell, who had a medical marijuana card from her doctor for chronic nausea and apparently used THC during her pregnancy.

There were complications upon her baby’s birth, according to the Court of Appeals’ decision. “A minute after his birth, [the baby] stopped breathing and required resuscitation. After exhibiting `jitteriness,’ he was transferred to Phoenix Children's Hospital and evaluated for a stroke and neonatal cerebral irritability. The hospital performed a drug test, which was positive for marijuana, Buspar, caffeine, and Benadryl, and diagnosed him with intrauterine addictive drug exposure,” the decision states.

Arizona DCS both fired Ms. Ridgell and placed her on the state’s child abuse registry, which led to the litigation. This past week, the Supreme Court upheld the appellate court’s determination that because the THC use was legal and there was apparently no evidence that his birth injuries were related to marijuana use, DCS could not place her on the child abuse registry.

The irony here is that most substance-related damage to unborn children comes from a completely legal substance: alcohol. Studies estimate that between 1.1 and 5% of the population suffers some degree of damage from prenatal alcohol exposure.

That fact aside, I believe there’s plenty of evidence that THC use during pregnancy is dangerous for the developing baby, despite the fact that many women are apparently using marijuana to relieve morning sickness. Children exposed to marijuana in utero have lower birth weights and may be more prone to mental health issues. There’s also a greater risk of stillbirth or premature birth. While the research is still unclear on the effect of prenatal marijuana use, the concerns are consistent with my own amateur research. A few years ago, I reviewed all child deaths reported to the state. A significant number of those deaths were coded as sudden unexplained infant death syndrome, which is a shorthand way of saying the child died and no one knows why. On deeper investigation, however, many of those cases involved children whose mothers actively used THC during pregnancy. These children were often born several weeks premature, with undeveloped lungs, and suffered from respiratory distress.

As marijuana more and more becomes a drug prescribed by physicians or authorized for recreational use, we need to better inform policymakers and potential parents of the dangers of its use during pregnancy.

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In other news:

• As my Taylor English colleague Debbie Ausburn has reported, the Fifth Circuit has allowed to go forward a lawsuit by parents against a police officer who wrongly detained and questioned their child in violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.

• In Virginia, perhaps the birthplace of the modern parental rights movement, the General Assembly is considering a number bills including “proposals to create publicly funded education savings accounts that parents could use to send their children to private schools, prohibit school officials from changing the names of students on official forms without a change of name order, and maintain a catalog of all printed and audiovisual materials in each school’s library for parents and students to review.”

• Here’s a story about a Kansas City mother who was murdered while her children were in foster care. Its suggestion is that the child welfare system failed her.

• Montana had the fastest growth of any state in its foster care population between 2010 and 2019. Legislators are looking for answers.

• Clergy in Kansas are not mandated reporters of child abuse. A legislator wants to change that.

• Should parents in child protection cases have the same rights as criminal defendants?

• Tennessee has the nation’s highest rate of foster care instability.

• New Jersey has a new “siblings bill of rights” for children in foster care.

• And although this is not the Weekly World News, I found this Pennsylvania case fascinating. Read at your leisure!