What Is The Purpose of Neonatal Drug Testing?

Controversy over neonatal drug testing may be due to a lack of agreement on the purposes for such testing. This article examines six issues: (1) the purpose of neonatal testing; (2) the selection of infants for testing; (3) the requirement for parental consent; (4) the concept of prenatal harm; (5) the standard of conduct required of a pregnant woman; and (6) the practical application of such a standard in designing a testing policy. It is argued that maternal consent does not need to be required for testing provided that: (1) adequate drug treatment services are available for the mother and infant; and (2) test results are excluded from use in legal proceedings. If intervention, therapy and research (rather than punishment) guides a neonatal testing policy, the sporadic testing of an infant's urine for the presence of illicit substances clearly falls short of the desired goals.