Criminally Yours: Babies, Criminality and Poverty

If you need another reason to support Planned Parenthood, here it is.

Gloria, a client of mine, had to have her baby while chained to a hospital bed.  Not because she was dangerous — she was serving time for being a small-time pitcher in a bigger-time drug ring — but because she happened to be in jail when the baby was born.

She had been charged with conspiracy to traffic in narcotics and, thus, was not only held responsible for the small amounts of drugs she moved but for the total amount the hierarchy was involved with.   She’d never met anybody in the conspiracy apart from her own supplier, a guy who befriended her in a very dangerous neighborhood, and saw no more profit than she’d have made working at McDonald’s.

Yes, Gloria (not her real name) made the wrong choice in selling drugs. She was punished with five years in federal prison. She was also eight months pregnant.

She’d once told me she sold the drugs to make quick money to buy diapers for her baby brother, and sanitary napkins for herself.  Her dad, a drug user, was in and out of jail. Her mom died young from AIDS.  Gloria had tried some prostitution, got pregnant without meaning to at age 18, and then got arrested.  She’s still finishing her jail sentence as I write this, desperate to get back to her baby.

Lela (not her real name) was born in the hospital while Gloria was handcuffed to the bed.  I don’t know how many readers have had children or have seen them being born, but it ain’t easy. And doing it chained to a bed, with correction officers standing guard, makes the experience not only that much more uncomfortable, but grossly humiliating.  For Gloria it was also completely arbitrary.  She’d never done a violent thing in her life; nor was there reason to believe she would in the midst of labor.

Gloria and I are still in contact.  The baby is now taken care of by Gloria’s dad, his act cleaned up, making good for past sins.  Gloria’s planning for the next, post-incarceration phase of her life.  She’s gotten her GED, but unfortunately has few job prospects. She has every reason to want to do well.

In the years I’ve worked as a public defender, most of my female clients, young women in desperate straits, were either pregnant or already had children.  (I’m talking about 18 to 21 year olds.) Many of my young, male clients, often without jobs and high school educations, had already fathered children.

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But in recent years, I’ve noticed this trend slowly changing.  More young women seem to know about and use birth control.  They’re hyper aware of sexually transmitted diseases, and recognize it’s tough to make a living without a high school education.

It’s a great trend. One that should be encouraged, but ironically is being challenged by the very people who feel poor people shouldn’t be having as many children and that money should be cut from the social welfare system.

I started thinking about Gloria today because I’ve been reading about the frontal attack against federal and state funding of Planned Parenthood and what that will mean for teenage pregnancies and the often inevitable connection between young mothers and fathers, poverty and criminality.

Planned Parenthood Federation of American (PPFA) has been around since 1921. It’s scope is extensive, providing information on sex education, contraception awareness, reproductive health care relating to cervical and other cancers and sexually transmitted diseases.

Planned Parenthood is the largest provider of reproductive health services in the U.S., with 97% of its clinical interactions focused on breast and cervical cancer screening.

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So why is this being undermined by a conservative lobby in federal and state governments?  Because a very small percentage of PPFA’s work, approximately 3%, relates to abortion.

I don’t understand this attitude.  Here’s the thing — NO state or federal monies funding Planned Parenthood are allowed to be used for abortion-related information or services.  Because of the controversy surrounding “right-to-life” versus “right-to-choose” this has already been determined, yet the lobby to defund PPFA continues, growing stronger every day, ticking off state funding one-by-one.

Ironically, Planned Parenthood began receiving federal funding in 1970 under Republican President Richard Nixon.  (Public Health Service Act, Title X.) The law had bipartisan support.  Liberals saw it as a useful tool for giving families more information about contraception and STDs, while conservatives saw it as a way to keep people off welfare.   Nixon described Title X funding as a way to assure that “no American woman be denied access to family planning assistance because of her economic condition.”

Makes sense.  So many young women (and frankly men, too), need the kinds of counseling services Planned Parenthood provides: clinics in their neighborhoods that they can get to easily and which teach them about the importance of yearly checkups, the risks involved with unprotected sex, and the benefits and costs of choosing to get pregnant.  Even just getting free condoms and tampons are a huge step toward cutting down on kids with kids.

Of course, this isn’t the only thing that needs to happen.  But where children engender poverty, and poverty engenders crime — it’s time to help support what the Planned Parenthood does, and not watch it be whittled down into non-existence.


Toni Messina has been practicing criminal defense law since 1990, although during law school she spent one summer as an intern in a large Boston law firm and realized quickly it wasn’t for her. Prior to attending law school, she worked as a journalist from Rome, Italy, reporting stories of international interest for CBS News and NPR. She keeps sane by balancing her law practice with a family of three children, playing in a BossaNova band and dancing flamenco. She can be reached at tonimessinalw@gmail.com ortonimessinalaw.com.