(New York Times, 2.5.1994)
The federal government has opened a civil rights investigation into a
South Carolina hospital's program of threatening pregnant women
who are drug users with both public exposure and jail to force them
into treatment programs.
When pregnant women seek prenatal treatment at the hospital, staff
members choose those suspected of being drug users and, without
informing the women, test them for drug use. If positive, the woman
is threatened with jail unless she signs up for treatment, and agrees
to complete both drug treatment and prenatal care that the hospital
prescribes.
"We want to find out if there was any discrimination involved in this
drug program," said Dennis Hayashi, director of the civil rights office
in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Hospital officials estimates that several hundred women have been
through the program, and that 40 to 50 of them were jailed when
they refused to cooperate; investigations also revelead that nearly all
the women tested for drugs were black.
