This radio show broadcasted by NPR highlights the criminalization of women who have or are using licit and illicit drugs in the US in connection to the Personhood USA movement. The National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found 413 criminal and civil cases where law enforcement intervene in the lives of pregnant women between 1973 and 2005.
Many women have been arrested, incarcerated, detained in mental institutions and drug treatments programs, or even forced to unwanted surgical interventions. The case presented in this show, includes that of Alicia Beltran, who was incarcerated and forced into a drug treatment programme, justified through the notion that foetuses have legal personality and the state should protect them when the mother poses a threat to the unborn child.