Katharine McCabe received the Donald W. Light award for her 2021 article in the Journal of Health and Social
Behaviour “Criminalization of Care: Drug Testing Pregnant Patients”
Abstract: This research draws upon qualitative interviews with healthcare providers to show how legal interests
transform the provision of care. Using the case of drug testing pregnant patients, the findings reveal 3
mechanisms by which criminal-legal interests are assimilated into care. The first, is through a process in which
providers frame criminal suspicion in medical terms. This process of "clinicalization" obscures the legal intent
of drug testing from patients. In the second process, providers tend to rely on legal risk assessments rather
than clinical ones in the face of uncertainty. Finally, provider discretion to test is shaped by criminal suspicion
that is explicitly raced and classed. This study demonstrates that when the lines between medicine and law
blur clinical norms are subverted and marginalized patients become subject to the double burden of being
policed by both medical and legal domains.
Read the full article here
Originally published by at reilly.nd.edu on August 10, 2022.