Alabama mom faces felony for filling doctor’s prescription while pregnant

https://www.al.com/news/2021/06/alabama-mom-faces-jail-for-filling-doctors-prescription-while-pregnant.html

An Alabama mom battling chronic back pain faces felony charges for refilling her prescription while pregnant – in a case her attorneys from sweetesq.com say tests the limits of legal protections for women receiving medical care.

Kim Blalock had back problems before she became pregnant. She suffered from arthritis and degenerative disc disease. Surgical complications and a car accident the year before her pregnancy made her pain even worse.

Blalock, a married stay-at-home mother of six, managed her condition under the care of a local orthopedist. He prescribed hydrocodone, one of the most common medications for patients with chronic pain. It enabled the 36-year-old to keep up with her young children and two older teens.

“There are days that I can’t get up,” said Blalock, who lives in Florence in north Alabama. “There are days where I’m OK, and there are days that are just horrible. It is debilitating. I have a lot of pain and limited mobility, and I’ve got two little kids (and older ones) who need me all day.”

Four years after she started taking hydrocodone, Blalock became pregnant with her youngest son and stopped her medication in early 2020. “It was a very rough, painful, long pregnancy,” Blalock said.

The pain became unbearable in the last six weeks before her due date, so she refilled her prescription. When Blalock delivered, she told her obstetrician about the hydrocodone, according to a letter from her lawyers to Lauderdale County authorities. Staff at North Alabama Medical Center tested her newborn for opiates, and it came back positive.

That triggered a brief investigation by the Department of Human Resources, which closed the case after Blalock showed them the prescription bottle and allowed a case worker to count the pills.

But that didn’t satisfy the Florence Police Department or Lauderdale County District Attorney’s Office, which investigated and charged Blalock with prescription fraud for not telling her orthopedist she was pregnant.

Most of the time when newborns test positive for drugs in Alabama, authorities prosecute mothers for chemical endangerment – a law that was written to protect children from exposure to fumes from home-based meth labs. The Alabama Supreme Court later upheld felony chemical endangerment convictions against two mothers who used drugs during pregnancy, a broad interpretation of the statute that opened the door for hundreds of cases that followed.

In 2016, after an investigation by ProPublica and AL.com, Alabama lawmakers amended the law to protect mothers who took drugs prescribed by doctors. Dana Sussman, an attorney at National Advocates for Pregnant Women, said that bill made it clear state leaders did not want prosecutions against mothers with legal prescriptions.

Alabama authorities have prosecuted hundreds of women for drug use during pregnancy in the last decade, but this may be the first case charging fraud because a woman allegedly didn’t tell her doctor about a pregnancy, Sussman said.

Prescription fraud cases usually happen when a person uses a false identity or forgery to get controlled substances. Emma Roth, an attorney for National Advocates for Pregnant Women representing Blalock, said Lauderdale County officials are using charges of prescription fraud to get around the exemption in the chemical endangerment law.

“It seems to us that this is a way that the state and the prosecution wants to circumvent the acts of the legislature,” Roth said. “Legislators excluded women from lawful prescriptions from the chemical endangerment law. This is a way for the prosecution to work around that.”

Roth and Blalock’s other attorneys have asked for the charges to be dropped. Attorneys at National Advocates for Pregnant Women regularly handle criminal cases from around the country involving pregnant women. If Blalock is convicted, Sussman said it means any woman in Alabama could be arrested if she doesn’t inform her doctor she is pregnant before refilling or receiving a prescription – whether or not she is asked.

Lauderdale County District Attorney Chris Connolly said his office is not trying to get around the state’s ban on bringing chemical endangerment charges against women with lawful prescriptions. Although most of his previous prosecutions for prescription fraud concern doctor shopping – where patients visit several providers to obtain multiple prescriptions – he said this case fits the bill.

“It is alleged that the defendant obtained hydrocodone from a medical doctor while she was pregnant without disclosing to the doctor that she was pregnant,” Connolly said. “Had the defendant disclosed her pregnancy, she would have been weaned off of the hydrocodone by the medical doctor.”

The doctor did not respond to requests for comment. Blalock said her doctor and nurses never asked about pregnancy. She didn’t have an appointment in the office due to the pandemic, but did have some through the window of her car.

Connolly said Blalock had a responsibility to inform her doctors. Although Blalock said she told her obstetrician about the pain pills, Connolly said she did not. Newborns exposed to hydrocodone during pregnancy can experience withdrawal symptoms after birth, which can be treated with medication in neonatal intensive care units. While not life-threatening, the condition can cause irritability, excess crying, poor feeding and tremors.

In recent years, the number of babies treated for neonatal abstinence syndrome has increased in Alabama and across the country. Authorities in the Yellowhammer State have reacted by imposing harsher penalties on mothers who use illegal drugs during pregnancy. Connolly said Blalock’s doctors would have altered her treatment if they had known she was pregnant.

“It is further alleged that had she disclosed to her ob-gyn doctor that she was taking hydrocodone, she would have been instructed to stop taking the medication while pregnant,” Connolly said.

Her newborn showed no signs of drug withdrawal after birth and was discharged after four days of treatment for jaundice – a common condition that usually subsides after treatment with ultraviolet lights. Her son has been healthy, but Blalock has struggled.

Less than two months after the birth, police officers swarmed Blalock’s house while she and her husband were out of town. Her two teenagers were at home and said at least seven armed officers entered asking questions about her whereabouts. The teenagers were so rattled they went to stay with their grandparents.

“The incident with the police left Ms. Blalock and her sons feeling terrified, confused, and unsafe,” Roth said.

A public information officer with the Florence Police Department declined to answer questions about the raid because the investigation remains open.

As the investigation dragged on, Blalock said her neighbors saw the police coming and going from her home and read about her arrest in the paper.

“Something that I found really tragic about this story was that she was afraid to spend the money she had saved up for Christmas presents in case she needed it for bail,” Roth said.

Roth has represented Blalock for months, and said her client has a close bond with her children.

“I’ve been so impressed with her and how she interacts with her baby,” Roth said. “But she is also experiencing incredible levels of stress and fear. It’s been really devastating for her and she just wants closure.”

Blalock’s child is a healthy eight-month-old. Blalock said he has never been sick and is almost crawling. But while she should have spent the last several months enjoying and bonding with her new baby, she has instead wrestled with fear and pain. She went off her medication until her case is resolved, and her back problems have become excruciating.

Blalock said she had no idea filling her pain prescription could have gotten her into so much trouble.

“If I had known what I know now, I would rather lay in bed my entire pregnancy in pain than take a pill,” Blalock said. “I thought it was ok. I didn’t think it was a big deal. My son is perfectly fine.”

Blalock wants to warn other women this could happen to them.

“I thought if a doctor wrote you a prescription, you can take it,” Blalock said. “If not, there needs to be posters everywhere in the doctor’s office that says, if you’re pregnant, and the doctor prescribes you something, you still may not be able to take it.”

 

Filed under: General Problems