Crack Babies

Crack babies is a term used to describe babies born to women who expose their fetuses to crack or powdered cocaine while pregnant. The name arose from a surge in cocaine and crack use in the United States; it was used in media outlets and in scientific research. The image most associated with a crack baby is a baby born to a minority woman, more specifically, an African American woman, living in poverty in the inner city.

Cocaine comes from the coca plant, whose leaves are chemically treated to produce a white powder. This white powder became a popular drug in the United States beginning in the 1960s and hit its peak of popularity in the 1980s. Cocaine can enter the human body through the vein or through the nose. To increase the potency of cocaine, users “freebase.” This is a process to remove the hydrochloride. When the freebased cocaine is kept in its solid form, it is called crack, because of the cracking noises it makes when heated and smoked. People who use crack may experience some negative effects, including heart attack, stroke, convulsions, increased blood pressure, and depression. When a pregnant woman smokes crack, the drug affects not only the woman but also the fetus.

During the 1980s, greater attention was being paid by law enforcement, legislatures, and media sources to the increased use of crack. Although the War on Drugs had been in effect for many years, use of crack was still prevalent at this time. Hospitals in large metropolitan areas began reporting incidents of babies being born addicted to crack. Once newborns were found exposed to drugs or alcohol, law enforcement agencies and/or child protection agencies were contacted, and many newborns were removed from their mothers and placed with relatives or in foster care. As more incidents were reported, attention was focused on these children, who were predicted to become a societal burden. It was thought crack babies would be severely mentally and physically delayed and scarred from the mother's crack use. The imagery conjured by the media focused on poor, inner-city, African American women as the main perpetrators of this situation. The media outlets helped to perpetuate a fear of what crack babies would do to existing resources, including medical costs, educational costs, and overall societal stability. A genuine fear developed about the potential hazards that crack babies were going to cause socially.

Many governmental prevention programs were initiated to allow pregnant women abusing crack or [Page 157]cocaine a chance to stay “clean” until their children were born. The bulk of these drug prevention programs were voluntary, but the instilled fear of the reverberations of crack babies led many states to criminalize the use of crack and cocaine while pregnant. Many states enacted legislation that would allow prosecutors to charge women who gave birth to a baby testing positive for cocaine with child abuse or child endangerment. Several states also tried incarcerating crack-addicted pregnant women in a tactic to keep them from using the drug until their babies were born. A few states charged these women with criminal offenses because they delivered cocaine to a minor through the umbilical cord. The criminalization of women delivering crack babies was problematic because the majority of states and the federal government do not consider a fetus to be human until birth. Many of the criminal prosecution attempts were against disadvantaged African American women who had few available resources to assist in their defense.

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