Harrisburg, Pa. • Pennsylvania’s highest court ruled Friday that mothers who use illegal drugs while pregnant cannot be considered perpetrators of child abuse against their newly born children under the state’s child protection law.
The Supreme Court's main opinion said the law's definition of a child does not include fetuses or unborn children, and victims of perpetrators must be children under the Child Protective Services Law.
"The fact that the actor, at a later date, becomes a person who meets one of the statutorily-defined categories of 'perpetrator' does not bring her earlier actions — even if committed within two years of the child's bodily injury — under the CPSL," wrote Justice Christine Donohue.