[Lovill's] cause has been taken up by civil liberties and women's rights groups who complain that Lovill was treated more severely than a man or nonpregnant woman in the same situation.

"Women should not be incarcerated because of their pregnancy. It's not healthy for pregnant women or the fetuses or future children that they carry," said Kathrine Jack, staff lawyer at National Advocates for Pregnant Women. "This is just another example of very old stereotypes being used to punish or discriminate against a woman."

Prosecutors say Lovill was targeted for violating her probation, not for being pregnant. But probation officers also were entitled to take action to protect the fetus from Lovill's drug use, said Doug Norman, Nueces County assistant district attorney.

"The use of illegal drugs during pregnancy clearly has an impact on the health of the unborn child that is beyond serious dispute," Norman told the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in a brief. "The state clearly has an interest in healthy children."

Oral arguments in Texas v. Lovill, PD-09-0401, will be Wednesday in the appeals court's downtown Austin courtroom.

Women's Take, a site run by the National Women's Law Center, points out flaws in the state's reasoning:

Jill offered a presentation called "Prosecuting Pregnancy," where she talked about state actions that criminalize the medical decision-making and drug use of pregnant women. For example, women have been criminally prosecuted with such charges as child endangerment, neglect, or fetal homicide when their newborn infants test positive for drugs at birth. Jill posed the question: Is it right to prosecute pregnant women when they (or their newborn children) test positive for illegal drugs while we don't prosecute anyone else for who tests positive for illegal drugs? And she answered it for us, too: No, she said, because having illegal drugs in your body is not a crime — even for a pregnant woman. Jill explained that the Supreme Court has held that it is unconstitutional to criminalize a person's status, including the status of being an addict. A person can be charged with possession of a drug, but the appearance of that drug in their system can't be a crime.

Now, obviously, the issue is a complicated and contentious one. I think that most people are uncomfortable with the notion of pregnant women using drugs.[...]

However, there are two questions that must be asked when looking at the way we currently punish pregnant women. First: Is it constitutional to criminalize pregnant women's actions during their pregnancies? Jill asked. The answer, is no. It is not equitable, legal, or constitutional to apply the law differently to pregnant women than anyone else. A recent example of this unconstitutionality in action is the State of Texas v. Amber Lovill. When Amber Lovill tested positive for drugs while pregnant and on probation, the state moved to revoke her probation and incarcerated her for the duration of her pregnancy. As the Webwire story on this subject notes, officers in the trial acknowledged numerous times that if Ms. Lovill were not pregnant, "less restrictive alternatives would have been the typical response to a positive drug screen."

The second question that must be asked when looking at the prosecution of pregnant women for their drug use: Is it an effective public health strategy to criminalize pregnant women's actions during their pregnancies? And the answer to this question is also a resounding no. First of all, it can sometimes in fact be more dangerous to the fetus for a pregnant woman to stop using certain drugs suddenly than it would be for her to continue using them. As the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University has shown, "It is important for the health of both a pregnant woman and her fetus to be under close medical supervision when she stops her drug use, particularly if she is addicted and if the drug to which she is addicted causes withdrawal symptoms." More broadly, as Jill has said, threats of prosecution just scare women away from drug treatment and prenatal care.

The ACLU has filed an amicus brief in support of Lovill.

This conversation is most certainly complicated. After all, I, like many on this site, am staunchly pro-choice and so I do not believe that a fetus should have rights, particularly if those rights trump the mother's. In addition, I am against the incarceration of non-violent offenders. However, memories of the 1980s crack epidemic are quite haunting, and I know of too many people who ended up wards of the state because their mother never could manage to get her addiction under control. If incarceration is helping to protect the child for exposure to harmful drugs and could possibly lead to treatment, is this a better way? If this child is intended to be carried to term, does it make things different? Is there ever a "right" to intervene?

Jailed for being pregnant? [American Statesmen]
A Lesson On Prosecuting Pregnancy [Women's Take]
State Of Texas V. Lovill - ACLU Amicus Brief In Support Of Respondent [ACLU]

Read more info about the incident and harassment that Muslim women face in America at the ACLU blog.

[via ACLU Blog Of Rights]

Here's the story: In 2005, FBI agents demanded that a group of Connecticut librarians on a committee of a librarian association present them with "any and all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person or entity". The agents didn't have a court order but something called a national security letter, designed to "protect against international terrorism" and rendering the librarians unable to reveal "to any person that the FBI has sought or obtained access to information or records." Admirably, librarians George Christian, Peter Chase, Janet Nocek and Barbara Bailey decided to fight for their patrons' privacy and challenge the constitutionality of this practice, becoming the unlikely center of an FBI investigation themselves. As Chase explains to Mother Jones, "People say very confidential things to our reference librarians...They have medical issues, personal matters. What people are borrowing at a public library is nobody's business."

About those national security letters: The MJ writers, Amy and David Goodman, describe them as "a little-known FBI tool originally used in foreign intelligence surveillance to obtain phone, financial, and electronic records without court approval." Since 9/11, they've been employed a lot — and, unsurprisingly, often abused. "An investigation last year revealed that the FBI had broken regulations governing NSLs in more than 1,000 cases... Even when an investigation is closed, information gained through an NSL is kept indefinitely in the FBI files," say the Goodmans. And because the four librarians had read the letter, they were now "a threat to national security", legally barred from appearing at the hearings or from speaking publicly, and had to be known as "John Doe" when they engaged the ACLU to challenge the NSLs and lift their gag order.

Although the Patriot Act was subsequently reauthorized, soon thereafter the Justice Department dropped the gag order case and was ordered by the Supreme Court to unseal the court documents in the case. Then, last September, a federal court ruled NSLs to be unconstitutional, calling them "the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values." Not shockingly, the Bush administration has appealed the decision.

Everyone loves a good "little guy takes on the Man" story, and this is a great one. In combination with Ms. Baker, frankly our profession-crush on the library sciences is growing by the second. Obviously it's not all heroics, but when you consider the cultural importance of the library in our history — it's a real trust, kids. It would have been so easy to have given up records that were,for the most part, probably pretty innocuous - the fact that anyone is willing to put themselves at this kind of risk for principle makes me actually choke up a little bit. (And for the first time, kind of get the point of Banned Books Week, which always struck me at my school as kind of preaching-to-the-choir-ish.) Sexy librarians, indeed!

America's Most Dangerous Librarians [Mother Jones]
Mayor Palin: A Rough Record [Time]
Sarah Palin, Book Banner? [MediaBistro]

The ACLU's doubts about the constitutionality of Texas's actions have been bolstered by evidence that the original call that brought authorities to raid the YFZ ranch — from a 16-year-old named Sarah Jessop Barlow, who claimed to have been forced to marry a 50-year-old when she was 15 — was a hoax.

According to the right-leaning American Spectator, Texas and Arizona authorities believe that the call may have been placed by a 33-year-old pathological liar named Rozita Swinton. "Swinton came to the attention of Texas officials after anti-polygamy advocates with an Arizona-based organization said they also received similar calls from 'Sarah,' which police then traced to Swinton, who appears to have been obsessed with the FLDS sect," the Spectator reports. Police have since raided Swinton's home and found a trove of FLDS information — though the Spectator also gleefully points out that Swinton is an Obama supporter; they're not exactly unbiased.

To combat all the poor publicity the FDLS sect has received in recent weeks, many of the female fundies have appeared on TV in order to put a "human face" on polygamists. Reports the AP, "FLDS women are speaking publicly about the heartbreak of being separated from their children and sharing some details of their life." This PR push is particularly important in the wake of Friday's decision.

FDLS mothers will be allowed to stay with their children only until DNA testing on all 416 children is complete. After that, only mothers under the age of 18 — still arguably children themselves — will be allowed to stay with their biological offspring. The DNA testing will not only show which children belong to which parents, but will also give insight into the FDLS family tree, which some describe as a "wreath" because of all the incest that takes place in the FDLS community. (There is a very rare strain of extreme retardation called Fumarase Deficiency that is reasonably common in the FDLS community because of all the intermarriage and the massive DNA testing could isolate the gene that causes Fumarase.)

ACLU Weighs In On Texas Polygamist Custody Case [CNN]
Searching For "Sarah" [Spectator]
Polygamous Sect Unleashes PR Campaign [AP via MSNBC]
Tracing The Polygamists' Family Tree[Time]

Earlier: Authorities Take 400 More Kids From Polygamist Sect In Texas
Please Do Not Cry For Those Poor Polygamist Wives, Fox News

• Betsey Johnson is selling a majority of her label to a private equity firm, which is sort of like the tent dress equivalent of this year's fashion financing world, but Portfolio blogger Lauren Goldstein Crowe is confused. What would a private equity firm want with Johnson, a "grandmother, 65 years old?" Um, and Valentino: such a strapping young lad himself! [Portfolio.com]
  
• The Atlanta City Council is attempting to amend the city's current public indecency law to stop the (twenty year old) "epidemic" of baggy pants and the horrific collateral damage of exposed boxer shorts. Women would also be prevented from showing thongs, sports bras, or any bra straps. We really hope this is a joke intended to provide Katt Williams with material for some epic Freaknik routine, but just in case, the ACLU is already on it. [AJC]
  
• If you have a Platinum Amex you can go to a New York Fashion Week show for $100 and watch the show from a sky box and, uh, eat some lunch, although shows last an average of 16 minutes, so you won't have time to eat much, which we guess is the point. [WSJ]

• Designer Behnaz Sarafpour sent emailed invitations to her Spring/Summer 2008 show in lieu of paper ones to help the environment. [FWD]
• Beth Ditto to model for Christopher Kane. Um, wow. [The Sun]
• Want to look just like Helena Christensen? Eat snake and drink Guinness. [Vogue UK]
• Anna Wintour will not be attending Paris Fashion Week, because she's going to London Fashion Week instead. The world: shocked. [WWD, 1st item]
• The latest celeb Steve & Barry's line: Venus Williams' EleVen. She says the name is rife with symbolism because the number shows how you can be more than your best? Um, whatever. What happened to her Reebok contract, anyway? [WWD, sub req'd]
• Danskin, in honor of its 125th anniversary, will offer key pieces from its "collection" in cashmere and silk. So what do you call a cashmere unitard? Unitarded! [WWD, sub req'd]