A pregnant mother needs to watch everything that she puts into her body. That is why when a mother from New Jersey was under trail for the past year when she decided to take methadone to counteract her drug addiction.
On Monday December 20, 2014, it was decided by a grand jury that the mother had no intentions in harming the unborn child, and that this was in fact not a case of neglect on her part. The court decided that the mother was trying to get clean, and that she was trying to make her self better for her child because it was a form of treatment.
One of the judges on the case, Justice Barry Abin, declared that “We hold that, absent exceptional circumstances, a finding of abuse or neglect cannot be sustained based solely on a newborn’s enduring methadone withdrawal following a mother’s timely participation in a bona fide treatment program prescribed by a licensed healthcare professional to whom she has made full disclosure.”
The mother was prescribed the drug, but the issue was that the baby did show signs of withdrawal when the baby was born and when the mother stopped taking the drug. While this was a controversial case, because it could be looked at it from the side that the mother should have tried other forms of rehabilitation that did not require drugs, but at the same time one can agree with the views of the judges who analyzed this case. Someone trying to get over a drug addiction, especially in the name of parenting is something that shows a form of maturity and love, and many people are seeing that.
Photo: The Wall Street Journal
