Greenville, South Carolina (CNN) -- Some are girlish 22-year-olds; others are women approaching 40. They come from South Carolina's rural counties and its booming cities. They are loud and muted, lively and vacant, hopeful and desperate. As different as they are, they share a connection to two powerful forces : their addictions and their babies. They are swallowed by the same shameful past. They don't know if they can be good mothers. They don't know if they can be clean mothers. They're here at a state-run drug-treatment program to learn how to do both. On this summer day, Ashley Hendrix, 24, is eight months pregnant with her first child and one of 16 women at the Phoenix Center's Serenity Place. This is her last shot to get clean -- or face jail.
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Serenity Place in South Carolina caters treatment programs to pregnant addicts
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South Carolina has been known to prosecute women in their third trimester
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A pregnant Ashley Hendrix sought treatment earlier this year for her addiction
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"If these women don't get this treatment, they are going to die," a counselor says
"@placeholder's response to addiction has been incarceration not treatment."