Posted 10/31/2005 05:24:00 PM by Douglas

Maybe it's just me, but something about this just doesn't sound right. I know it was passed in Texas, and I think it's obvious as to where its intentions lie.

Tracy Ward is in hot water again, charged with another drug-related offense.

On Wednesday, Potter County charged Ward, 31, for tampering with physical evidence, alleging she smashed a crack pipe Oct. 22 near an Amarillo Boulevard motel.

Ward, the first woman in Texas prosecuted for passing drugs to her unborn baby, is appealing her 2004 conviction in that case.

Last year, Ward, 31, received five years' probation after pleading guilty to delivery of a controlled substance to a minor by smoking crack cocaine before her son was born.

About two years ago, Texas lawmakers amended state law to redefine the term "individual" to mean a "human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth."

The law permits criminal prosecutions of third parties for murder, assault, intoxicated assault and intoxicated assault against a fetus.

Not to put too fine a point on an absurd example, but is the same true for legal substances, like alcohol and tobacco? Are pregnant women, possibly before they knew they were pregnant, going to get prosecuted for contributing to the delinquency of a minor for drinking a beer? I hope the D.A. is ready for some over-time, because without beer, half the women in Texas wouldn't even be pregnant.

Regardless of your opinion of Roe v. Wade, this reeks of an end run around the 30 year old opinion. If it's legal to dispose of this life, yet illegal to deliver a controlled substance to it, it's just a matter of time before that test case finds its way before the new court.

But wait! Isn't it already illegal to smoke crack? So why are they prosecuting her for delivering it to her baby instead of just prosecuting her for buying/possessing/smoking it? Are they trying to get a test case out of Ms. Ward? As Carlin once said, "I don't know about the rights of the unborn, but I know being born again doesn't give you twice as many."