Women’s opinions of legal requirements for drug testing in prenatal care

Purpose: To explore women’s attitudes and perceptions regarding legal requirements for prenatal drug testing.

Methods: Web-based survey of 500 US women (age 18–45) recruited from a market research survey panel. A 24-item questionnaire assessed their opinion of laws requiring doctors to routinely verbal screen and urine drug test patients during pregnancy; recommendations for consequences for positive drug tests during pregnancy; and opinion of laws requiring routine drug testing of newborns. Additional questions asked participants about the influence of such laws on their own care-seeking behaviors. Data were analyzed for associations between participant characteristics and survey responses using Pearson’s chi-squared test.

Results: The majority of respondents (86%) stated they would support a law requiring verbal screening of all pregnant patients and 73% would support a law requiring universal urine drug testing in pregnancy. Fewer respondents were willing to support laws that required verbal screening or urine drug testing (68% and 61%, respectively) targeting only Medicaid recipients. Twenty-one percent of respondents indicated they would be offended if their doctors asked them about drug use and 14% indicated that mandatory drug testing would discourage prenatal care attendance.

Conclusion: Women would be more supportive of policies requiring universal rather than targeted screening and testing for prenatal drug use. However, a noteworthy proportion of women would be discouraged from attending prenatal care – a reminder that drug testing policies may have detrimental effects on maternal child health.