Two moms face judge for taking drugs while pregnant
ROGERSVILLE — Two mothers who used hard drugs during their pregnancies last year appeared separately before Judge John Dugger in Hawkins County Criminal Court Friday to offer pleas to one count of felony reckless endangerment each.
One mom, Brittany Lyn Laws, 29, 215 Grandview St., Mount Carmel, pleaded guilty to felony reckless endangerment and was sentenced to one year in prison. She must serve 30 percent of her sentence before she is eligible for parole.
Laws was accused of using oxycodone, valium and other drugs in the nine months prior to the birth of her child Nov. 24, 2010.
She requested alternative sentencing from Dugger, who then asked her what she was doing to address her drug problem.
Laws told the judge she had started out-patient drug counseling at the request of the Department of Children’s Services, and she had received custody of her child.
When Dugger asked her if she could pass a drug test that day, however, Laws admitted she couldn’t and she was immediately taken into custody to begin serving her sentence.
Megan Nichole Feagins, 21, 113 Arnold Road, Surgoinsville, also pleaded guilty Friday to one count of felony reckless endangerment for using oxycodone, hydrocodone and oxymorphone in the nine months prior to the birth of her child Dec. 15, 2010.
Feagins’ request for pretrial diversion was approved, however, after she passed a drug test given by probation authorities present in the courtroom Friday.
Feagins’ attorney Doug Godbee told the court that neither the Department of Children’s Services, Juvenile Court, nor the attorney general’s investigator were opposed to giving Feagins a pretrial diversion.
Godbee told the court Feagins has already been taking and passing weekly drug tests administered through DCS.
“It was the baby’s daddy who actually gave her the pills (during Feagins’ pregnancy),” Godbee stated to the judge. “He is a member of a prominent family and never was charged with anything.”
The child is in the custody of the father’s parents.
If Feagins successfully completes one year of “strict” supervised probation her record will be expunged.
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If the fetus has no rights as a person, how can a pregnant woman be charged with felony reckless endangerment?
If the fetus has rights as a person, how can a pregnant woman legally terminate that pregnancy by killing the fetus, or having another abort the fetus?
It would appear that the fetus either has the rights as a person, and can be endangered or murdered, or the fetus has no rights as a person and can legally be endangered or killed, and I do not know which is true, but it should not be both ways.