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Woman who refused Caesarean section is charged with taking drugs while pregnant

Patient Safety Monitor Alert, March 17, 2004

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Patient safety peculiar: Utah woman who refused Caesarean section charged with taking drugs while pregnant

A Utah woman charged with killing her unborn fetus by refusing an emergency Caesarean section to deliver twin babies has also been charged with taking drugs during her pregnancy, according to the Web site The Smoking Gun.

Melissa Rowland, 28, was charged in January with felony child endangerment after the surviving baby, a girl named Hannah, tested positive for alcohol and cocaine. A blood test on Rowland also tested positive for cocaine. The biological father of the twins told investigators that he had smoked marijuana with Rowland three weeks before the birth.

While acknowledging that she smoked pot, Rowland told police officers that "the marijuana must have been laced with cocaine because that is the only way that cocaine could be in her system or in Hannah's system," according to the police report.

Salt Lake City prosecutors also charged Rowland on March 11 with criminal homicide in the death of her stillborn male baby, according to a report in the Salt Lake Tribune. They claim that she ignored repeated warnings in the last weeks of pregnancy that the twins she was carrying could die or suffer brain damage unless she had an immediate Caesarean section.

One nurse reportedly told police that Rowland said she didn't want to have a scar and that she would rather "lose one of the babies than be cut like that," according to the Tribune.

Edward Leis of the Utah Office of the Medical Examiner, who performed an autopsy on the dead twin, said the unborn child died two days before his sister was born. The probably cause of death statement indicates that "if the defendant had delivered Baby Boy Rowland when her doctors had urged her to, the baby would have survived," the Tribune reported.

---- Editor's note: About "Patient Safety Peculiar ----

From time to time, this website features one of the many "peculiar" patient safety stories that comes across our news desk. If you hear of a peculiar story, send it to managing editor Wendy Johnson (wjohnson@hcpro.com).

If we publish your story, we'll send you a free copy of the most recent issue of Briefings on Patient Safety, the monthly newsletter that sponsors this free e-zine.

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