WAUKESHA, Wis. — In the next few months, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is expected to decide whether county officials in this Milwaukee suburb acted legally when they took custody of an unborn child a month before its due date.
The mother-to-be was using cocaine, drugging the developing baby within. The local social services agency asked a Juvenile Court judge to place the fetus in Waukesha Memorial Hospital. The judge issued a detention order to the Waukesha County sheriff.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Wednesday February 5, 1997 Home Edition Part A Page 3 Metro Desk 1 inches; 33 words Type of Material: Correction
Fetal custody-- An article in Sunday's Times incorrectly quoted a Wisconsin social worker's court petition seeking custody and hospital placement of an unborn child. The document should have referred to a "child of 36 weeks gestation."
The 24-year-old cocaine user had no say in the matter. She was not under arrest, nor charged with any crime. Yet she was confined.
What happened to Angela M.W. in September 1995, is a logical extension of the famous case of Roe vs. Wade, maintains the county's attorney, Assistant Corporation Counsel William J. Domina.
His position, affirmed by the state Appeals Court, has heartened some youth-justice experts. At the same time, it has appalled the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as some women's law specialists and public health advocates who contend that it would result in juvenile courts acting as pregnancy police, overseeing an expectant mother's way of life.
Twenty-four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Roe vs. Wade that a woman had a right to choose whether to have an abortion or carry her pregnancy to term.
But as the fetus grows, the court ruled, the state's interest--its right to intervene and regulate--grows as well.
It is "a very important statement about choice and the consequences of choice," Domina said. "If an individual chooses to carry a pregnancy to term, what does that mean?"
"Choice entails responsibility," said Margaret M. Zimmer, another assistant corporation counsel on the case. "That's been given too little attention."
Plenty of attention is being paid now.
The National Assn. of Counsel for Children and the prosecutor in neighboring Milwaukee County weighed in with legal briefs in support of recognizing the Juvenile Court's authority over babies-to-be. Eleven health, women's and children's organizations banded together to argue against seizing fetuses and depriving pregnant women of their liberty. They say the Roe vs. Wade decision applies only to the power to restrict abortion.
"This is heady stuff," said Deborah Mathieu, a University of Arizona political scientist and author of a recent book about prenatal protection.
