Every Being Counts A twenty-eight year old Alicia Beltran was fourteen weeks pregnant when she decided to have an early checkup. A year back Alicia struggled with an addiction towards Percocet, a painkiller, which she herself stopped on her own. However, at the doctor’s office Alicia decided to mention it to her doctor, just in case it was of any significance. Later, to Alicia’s surprise the doctor and a social worker accused her of endangering her unborn child’s life. Alicia was then taken into custody because she “refused” to take an anti-addiction drug, which she knew she did not need. Alicia Beltran was also deprived from her rights, she was arrested even before she could manage to get a lawyer of her own. Also, to make matters worse, the court had already prearranged legal guardians for HER baby. Nevertheless, Alicia was also forced to go to a rehabilitation center for seventy-eight days. Throughout these seventy-eight days Alicia kept asking for her lawyer wondering why all this was happening to her, she wanted things to be explained to her correctly. I understand that under the ‘Cocaine Mom Act’ child-welfare authorities can take a pregnant woman who USES illegal drugs or alcohol and arrest them, however, with Alicia Beltran this wasn’t the case. So I keep asking myself, who

De Leon 2 exactly gave the authorities this right to remove this woman from her home for something she did not do wrong?
First of all, Mrs. Beltran did not receive professional medical privacy. Her doctor without her permission contacted child-welfare authorities without even having the correct evidence at first. It was proved after, that Beltran came out clean in her urine test, so then why did the doctor even assume she was still on painkillers without definite evidence? Secondly, Mrs. Beltran was neglected of her physical liberty. If the doctor and the social workers were so concerned for the well being of Beltran’s baby then shouldn’t they have been worried for her health as well? Having a pregnant woman under so much stress can also wind up affecting the baby inside of her. It has been proved that babies feel and listen to what their mother is saying or going through, so having Beltran going through such difficult times might have affected the baby as well.
Is it possible that Alicia Beltran was treated this way because of her economical status? Do you think that if for example Hilary Clinton would go to the doctors her medical privacy would also be violated? I don’t think so, and that is not fair because it could happen to the rest of us. Alicia truly believed that what she told her doctor was confidential, and she would have never guessed that by doing so she would later suffer consequences that were not even hers to take. Alicia was being honest when she entrusted her doctor about her earlier drug addiction to Percocet. She told her doctor this information to help her baby not to harm it. I know that if I

De Leon 3 were pregnant I would want my baby to be really healthy and I would make sure of it, even if it made me open up a past chapter of my life that I wasn’t too proud about.
“The women are scared to come in if they have dependency problems” said Dr. Cresta W. Jones a medical specialist at the Medical College of Wisconsin. Well who wouldn’t? Pregnant women are not seeking the medical attention that they need because they are afraid