Drinking drugs and smoking whilst being pregnant?

[pennygirl26]

I know someone who is due her baby in Dec. She only found out a few weeks ago she is pregnant.

She had very openly continued to smoke cigarettes and joints,but has been drinking also saying its not anything worse than what she's done in the past 6 months. She's also still taking coke every now and again. What can I do about this? I feel sick every time I see her. The other night I caught her buying a half bottle. It's just so dicgusting I don't know who to go to as I don't want her to know its me.

ViciousJackdaw
That's an interesting point.

I think the difference there is that parents are choosing not to do something - so baby has been conceived but they are choosing not to terminate. They haven't caused the disability.

With FAS or harm caused by drugs that's an action that the woman chose to do.

It just feels too callous to shrug our shoulders as though these children don't matter at all and our only concern needs to in arguing for the rights of women to do as they please.

Phone social services. Hanged are if she doesn’t give a monkeys now she won’t when her baby arrives.

I'm really not sure you could "police" such a situation to any beneficial outcome to the parent.

Do you say to the mother if you take drugs known to damage the foetus, drink above the recommended weekly allowance or continue to smoke we will lock you up so you can't, thus protecting the innocent baby from the harm being caused to it.

In the case of the mother being an addict, cold turkey would not be an option as the shock would do more damage than good.

Something does need to be done though as it simply shouldn't be acceptable to allow a woman to potentially do so much damage to a (soon to be ) living being.

What about parents with genetic disabilities who have children tequila? Achondroplasia (Dwarfism) for example?

I can only assume you either want to lock them up for life from child birthing age, or forcibly sterilise them? Since that’s the natural follow on from you prevention of harm to children posts

Passthecherrycoke

Are you comparing choosing to drink or take drugs during pregnancy with having a disability? Women can't choose not to have a disability but they can choose not to drink or take drugs whilst pregnant.

I've already said that I don't have the answers to this. I agree that women should have the right to bodily autonomy, but with these rights should come responsibilities. I suppose if a woman decided to get pregnant knowing that there was a very high chance that their child would be profoundly disabled then that would be as equally selfish as a woman who drinks or takes drugs during pregnancy but many, many women who have a genetic disability have screening of embryos or screening during pregnancy to try to ensure a healthy baby.

Again, I agree with the right to bodily autonomy. What I'm finding very hard to agree with is the attitude coming across here which appears to me to be that the only thing to consider is the rights of the woman, and that's where it ends. I can't help but thinking beyond that to the effects on the subsequent child. They seem to be completely forgotten in this conversation.

What I'm finding very hard to agree with is the attitude coming across here which appears to me to be that the only thing to consider is the rights of the woman, and that's where it ends. I can't help but thinking beyond that to the effects on the subsequent child. They seem to be completely forgotten in this conversation.

You keep saying this over and over again. Please go back and read the thread. Many, many posters including myself have said if awful that children are born with FAS/other problems relating to maternal bad choices. The alternative where women are arrested for drinking/smoking in pregnancy is worse.

Yanbu - do report her. It sounds like she’s likely to be on their radar anyway and if not she should be. She’s a selfish bitch who doesn’t deserve to have children.

But in general as people say, the whole thing is a Minefield (illegal drugs less so)

Those who are talking about bodily autonomy, I totally agree that you can’t stop women doing legal activities due to being pregnant but where the activity is to excess what would you think of removing the child at birth on the grounds that the child has been actively neglected in utero and the mother clearly has no concept of how to care for a child or how to put it’s needs at the forefront. The threat of this would also be the push any potential decent mother needed to clean up their act and if they didn’t then they shouldn’t be anywhere near a baby anyway.

I am ashamed to say that I smoked weed when I was pregnant, I was 20 and selfish and got pregnant for all the wrong reasons, luckily my daughter was okay, she slept all night from 5 weeks onwards and a fellow weed smoking pal of mine said it was because ‘she learned how to chill in my womb’ and at the time I thought it funny but now I’m a grown up I know how bad that was, luckily my daughter doesn’t have asthma although she was born very small and the nurses said it was the cigarettes.

I know of women who didn’t know they were pregnant and took hard drugs throughout their pregnancy and they’re so lucky that their child was okay.

I didn’t know that SS could do anything whilst a mother was pregnant but if this is the case, can’t you speak to this woman first before you go to the SS, give her a chance to see what she says and if you don’t get anywhere then call SS.

Many, many posters including myself have said if awful that children are born with FAS/other problems relating to maternal bad choices.

But then you're also arguing that the mother has the right to harm the child through her choices.

I just can't reconcile this in my head at all because I can't reconcile how anyone can have the "right" to cause harm.

they’re so lucky that their child was okay.

They're not lucky at all. Their child is lucky that they weren't harmed.

I totally agree that you can’t stop women doing legal activities due to being pregnant but where the activity is to excess what would you think of removing the child at birth on the grounds that the child has been actively neglected in utero and the mother clearly has no concept of how to care for a child or how to put it’s needs at the forefront.

Case by case, I would agree with this. The issue is what people would deem to be “excess”. I am an alcoholic. I am trying to bring my drinking under control (by which I mean not drinking at all) and I drank during pregnancy: a small glass, about once a week from the second trimester. I understand now that I drank this one glass out of a perceived need, but I don’t believe it harmed my child or that there was any serious question of its doing so. However, some people - and they are entitled to their view - will say that is disgusting, that my child should have been removed at birth etc. Others would say “Meh - I drank more than that and have no issues with alcohol at all. I just think a little of what you fancy does you good.”

So how do we decide where the line is?

But then you're also arguing that the mother has the right to harm the child through her choices.

While the baby is in utero, the mother has the right to make whatever choices she wants. Everybody wants her to make good choices, but she had bodily autonomy. It cannot be “she has bodily autonomy but...”.

Tequila yes you are correct, the child was lucky that they were born okay, my mistake

While the baby is in utero, the mother has the right to make whatever choices she wants.
And that child, potentially, has to bare the burden of those choices for life.

If the day after birth the mother caused catastrophic brain injuries to the baby she would rightly be charged with a criminal offence, yet before birth she can cause the same injuries and that's her right?

How can we continue to be so permissive?

How can we continue to be so permissive

Because the alternative is worse: women as incubators, women punished for their legal choices, women coerced into terminating “risky” pregnancies, women locked up, women fearful and anxious about falling pregnant, women without autonomy.

Who’s up for that?

@ViciousJackdaw so it’s ok to potentially saddle another human with life limiting disabilities is it?!? FFS some people are unreal! Actually are you all there. She just accepts she’s made a mistake and asks for the baby to be adopted after birth not slowly potentially disables the poor thing! Man alive!

OP get in touch with social services she won’t know it was you. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t. No doubt any damage has already been done but you should probably do something.

seaweedandmarchingbands

Who's going to look after these disabled children then? Are you?

TequilaPilates

Sadly, no. If the State decides it has the power to remove a child from its family (and it does - with the agreement of a court) then the State takes on that responsibility for that child’s care. I can’t think, otherwise, why they would think the judgment about the child's fate was theirs to make.

How can we continue to be so permissive?

If someone is an addict they are highly motivated to obtain their substance of choice. Simply making it illegal to consume during pregnancy won't cut it. You'd need to also take the mother's liberty away and detain her somewhere. But then in prisons and MH wards it's fairly straightforward to sneak in alcohol/drugs, so that would be unlikely to work. So what to do? Do we create a highly secure environment, knowing that some mothers will be treated as a criminal or incapacitous but still likely have some access to substances? Because that is the practical conclusion of what you are advocating.

seaweedandmarchingbands

So you argue for the right for a woman to potentially cause a lifelong disability to her child and then just shrug your shoulders when that child grows up in the care system?

So you have no consideration for the lives of these children then? Do they mean nothing at all to you? This is what I mean by the callousness on this thread.

I get the argument for bodily autonomy but FFS how can people simply not care about the children damaged by it?

"Oh, they'll just go.into care" shrugs shoulders.

Namechangeformeplease

And not only that, can you imagine what it would do to relationships between HCPs and pregnant women? How many fewer women would declare pregnancy? How many would decline antenatal care? How many “I didn’t know I was pregnant” births there would be? It would be an unmitigated disaster from conception, as it were.

*So you argue for the right for a woman to potentially cause a lifelong disability to her child and then just shrug your shoulders when that child grows up in the care system?

So you have no consideration for the lives of these children then? Do they mean nothing at all to you? This is what I mean by the callousness on this thread.*

I argue for it. I don’t shrug my shoulders. It’s tragic and horrible.

But to turn that back on you, do you argue for wide-reaching and (in my view) tyrannical powers for the State to detain pregnant women against their will, and when people point out the risks, shrug your shoulders?

Tequila you’re asking the same questions over and over (which have been answered, multiple times) yet you’re not offering any solutions. How would you stop women drinking alcohol excessively/ taking drugs when pregnant?

I don't know how to solve it, I've said that repeatedly.

I do think though that the resulting children from these pregnancies deserve some consideration not just a "well, they'll be taken into care".

So what’s your point then? You can’t offer any suggestion as to what that consideration should be