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Abstract
This essay explores the relationship between positivist epistemology, legal analysis, and the prosecution of pregnant women. Drawing on feminist analysis of science, the paper argues that legal thought and practice have been seriously distorted by positivist perspectives, especially in terms of narrow notions of what constitutes cause and effect. The critique of positivism provides a basis for reconceiving legal responses to drug use by pregnant women that are consistent with expanded notions of legal causation. Such an expansion provides the intellectual justification for expanding institutional interventions and encouraging a generally fairer and more satisfying politics.