Pregnant

Noontime gunfire claimed the lives of a pregnant woman and her male companion yesterday in West Baltimore, and city police were seeking the public's help in finding their killer. The victims, Jennifer Lynne Morelock, 25, of New Windsor and Jason David Woycio, 29, of Westminster, were taken to Maryland Shock Trauma Center, where the man was pronounced dead shortly after arrival and Morelock died about 5 p.m., said Detective Michael Baier of the homicide squad. Baier said Morelock was about six months pregnant and that efforts to save the fetus failed.

Maryland General Assembly leaders agreed yesterday to create a $76 million program to provide government-financed health insurance to 60,000 children and pregnant women from working poor families.The compromise proposal, worked out by House and Senate negotiators, is expected to win final General Assembly approval today or tomorrow."It's a great piece of legislation, and I'm confident it will pass overwhelmingly in both houses," said Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller."This is something the entire legislature and the governor can be very proud of," said House Speaker Casper R. Taylor Jr.The program was a centerpiece of the legislative agenda of Gov. Parris N. Glendening, who said through a spokesman yesterday that he was pleased with the final bill and would sign it into law."

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - When a South African provincial leader promised this week to make AIDS drugs available to all HIV-positive pregnant women to protect their babies from becoming infected, it hardly sounded like a rebellious act. But here in South Africa, where AIDS is as much a political as a medical issue, the announcement was a challenge to the government's much-criticized policy on limiting public access to drugs that fight AIDS. It also made the premier of the province that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria the latest hero in a nationwide movement of politicians, doctors, church leaders and activists to stir the government to take action against its AIDS crisis.

PRETORIA, South Africa - South African AIDS activists won a major court battle against their government yesterday, as a judge ruled that public health officials must supply pregnant women with a drug that can protect their babies from becoming infected with the AIDS virus. Applause and cheers filled the courtroom here when Judge Chris Botha delivered the ruling that will make the drug nevirapine available nationwide in public hospitals and clinics. For the government, yesterday's ruling was a humiliating defeat.

The U.S. Department of Justice has found no grounds to prosecute a county police officer who shot and killed a pregnant woman when officers serving a search warrant burst into a Severn home last year.Crystal B. Nelson, 26, who was nine months pregnant, was killed Oct. 20 when county police Officer Thomas G. Tyzack, as part of a drug raid on the home, tried to remove her from the couch as she slept and his 9mm gun went off. County State's Attorney Frank Weathersbee, who declined to press charges, ruled that although Tyzack was negligent, no proof could be found of "willful and wanton disregard for human life."

Pregnant women do not tip over, and researchers say an evolutionary curve has a lot to do with the reason why. Anthropologists studying the human spine have found that women's lower vertebrae evolved in ways that reduce back pressure during pregnancy, when the mass of the abdomen grows by nearly one-third and the center of mass shifts forward considerably. That increases pressure on the spinal column, strains the muscles and generally reduces stability. Even without the benefit of advanced study in biomechanics, women tend to deal with the shift - and avoid tumbling over like a bowling pin - by leaning back.

Linda Williams got pregnant the old-fashioned way in an unlikely place -- the Montgomery County Detention Center."I got pregnant in jail," Williams says with a trace of pride.Williams, a tall, striking woman, is 6 1/2 months pregnant and is serving five years for credit card fraud. She says she was able to have sex with her boyfriend -- who was also incarcerated on credit card charges -- more than once while being held in the Montgomery jail."I'm sneaky. We snuck," she said in a recent interview at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women in Jessup, where she was transferred after her sentencing.

MORE THAN distasteful, a South Carolina hospital's policy of drug testing pregnant women and then -- without the women's consent -- sending results to police was unconstitutional. So said the Supreme Court this week, mounting an important victory for privacy protections. The Medical University of South Carolina had contended that the ultimate goal of its policy was to reduce drug use among pregnant women amid a rising number of "crack-babies." Maybe a good intention, but so what. By not informing the women that the test results would be forwarded to police, the hospital trampled all over the Fourth Amendment.

WASHINGTON -- In a closely watched case, the Florida Supreme Court ruled yesterday that a pregnant woman may not be prosecuted for taking any action to harm or kill the fetus she is carrying.The decision threw out criminal charges against Kawana M. Ashley, a St. Petersburg woman who shot herself in the abdomen with a pistol when she was six months' pregnant because she did not want to have another child and could not afford an abortion.The shot wounded the fetus, who was delivered by Caesarean section and died 15 days later, too undeveloped to survive.

Maryland's highest court yesterday threw out the convictions of two Eastern Shore women who were sent to prison after their babies were born with cocaine in their systems, likening the prosecutions to going after mothers who smoked, failed to exercise or even went horseback riding while pregnant. While social workers regularly get involved when newborns test positive for drugs, Talbot County appears to be the only place in Maryland - and just one of a few in the nation - where police and prosecutors were putting mothers in prison for it. Within hours of the court's opinion yesterday, Talbot County State's Attorney Scott G. Patterson said in a statement that his office disagreed with the decision but would cease the practice of charging such mothers with reckless endangerment.