In a throwback to the grandly loony feminism of the 1970s, the New York state branch of the National Organization for Women is denouncing what it brands the "Criminalization of Pregnancy" act.
This state bill -- a rational response to the murder of several small children by drug-addicted mothers -- would create the presumption that an infant born with drugs in its bloodstream is neglected. Under current law, social workers cannot so much as monitor such a baby until further evidence develops that it has been abused.
But don't bother NOW with rational responses. It knows a threat to its anti- child dogma when it sees one. The "hare-brained" bill, NOW says, is unconstitutional because it "repeatedly refers to embryos and fetuses as 'children,'" thus insinuating into state law the dangerous notion of "fetal rights," and because it violates the ban on illegal search and seizure by drawing conclusions about a mother's behavior from an infant's "toxicology reports." Besides, the bill is sexist: It is silent about "the genetic effects of paternal drug use and abuse on sperm."
Compliments to the bill's sponsors, assembly members Stephen Kaufman and Nettie Mayersohn, who met this challenge with the respect it deserved: They announced their conversion. NOW's statement, they said facetiously, convinced them to abandon their excessive concern for "post-birth fetuses" in favor of the real victims: abused sperm! They appealed for survivors of sperm abuse to come forward and tell their stories. And they promised to make state law conform with NOW's view that "post-birth fetuses, beaten to death by drug abusing parents, are not really entitled to any protection."
Kaufman and Mayersohn, by the way, are both prochoice. For now.