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.

Right so am I to understand tequila that you don't want any actual action to be taken? That is, you're quite happy for policy to continue to be made and enacted on the basis that pregnant women aren't incubators and have the same right to engage in legal activity as unpregnant people, you just want people on MN to say they don't?

It's not "the right to cause harm" specifically though, is it? It's the right to bodily autonomy, a by-product of which may be harm to the foetus. I get that this is uncomfortable for you, but where you have two entities sharing one body (for lack of a better description), if one of those entities has total bodily autonomy then the other one doesn't. It really is an either/or. As soon as you posit that a foetus has rights, you set up a conflict with the rights of the mother.

I'm interested that you appeared to suggest upthread (again, please correct me if I'm wrong) that you support the right of women to choose abortion. Can you explain to me how the right to abort a pregnancy and the right to "cause harm" to a foetus are fundamentally different, as you appear to believe they are?

But I also think that we should stop saying a woman has the right to cause harm.

She may well have the right to drink and we acknowledge that harm may happen as a result but that to me is different to saying "she has the right to harm her child”

You’re arguing about a tiny point of semantics. She has the right to drink and smoke, knowing full well that it is likely to cause harm to the foetus. Is that better?

Midwives do a carbon monoxide check at the booking appointment so they will know she is a smoker. I have never been a smoker but used to live in a busy city and my level came back as 5 during one of my pregnancies which they considered ‘light smoker’. I’m not sure if she believed me when I said I definitely didn’t smoke because I received an invitation to a smoking cessation class in the post .

Anyway, my point is that the midwife will know she is a smoker and should provide her help to quit. The drugs is a bit thin on the ground if it’s mostly just cannabis rather than something harder such as heroin or crack. The baby won’t be born dependent on cannabis so not sure how anyone would know unless she confessed.

Perhaps report to SS.

Because you can accept that someone has bodily autonomy but not the right to harm someone else.

You can’t, when one exists inside the other.

It's not "the right to cause harm" specifically though, is it?

They are the very words that a previous poster used, that the mother has the right to cause harm.

Can you explain to me how the right to abort a pregnancy and the right to "cause harm" to a foetus are fundamentally different, as you appear to believe they are

Because the foetus that is aborted will never know. They won't have to grow up and live with, for 70 plus years, the affects of a lifelong disability. They won't have to grow up in the care system being shoved from pillar to post, possibly be excluded from education due to their behavioural problems, turfed out of care aged 16 or 18 to just have to get by best way they can will they?

That for me is the difference.

Because you can accept that someone has bodily autonomy but not the right to harm someone else.

The foetus is not “somebody else” until it is born.

Would any of you volunteer to explain to these children why they have the disabilities that they have?

What would you say? "I know it's hard for you but, well, your mum had rights"

What would you say? "I know it's hard for you but, well, your mum had rights"

As an explanation of why their mum wasn’t chained to a bed for nine months? If I had to.

Perhaps when you volunteer to tell all the women imprisoned and worse because of the laws prioritising the foetus over them I might think about it tequila. And all the babies born disabled because their mothers were afraid to seek antenatal care because they knew they might be punished (or sued...) for what they chose to do with their bodies whilst pregnant.

? Loads of people will explain to them why they have the disabilities they do. Medical staff, support workers, social services, their teachers and other childhood support. Their family. Of course I’d explain to them why they have their disabilities if I had that job. I wouldn’t need to volunteer, I assume I’d be doing I regularly and all trained up on how to do so. It wouldn’t be a secret or anything

Would any of you volunteer to explain to these children why they have the disabilities that they have?

Is that responsibility not equally yours, if you aren't prepared to support state intervention to prevent it?

When I was pregnant I prioritised the needs of the foetus over my needs. The foetus is utterly vulnerable and dependent on the mother. Pregnancy is not for long. It is ridiculous to compare the needs of a foetus to the desires of the mother- they are not comparable. Any person who knowingly poisons her body, aware that the foetus is being harmed as a result, when pregnant is selfish, wicked and cruel. Social services should step in.

Their family

I know 3 siblings, removed from their family, all with FAS and adopted by the same couple.

One boy has had to go back into care because his behaviour has become unmanageable. What life does he have? What life will he have now? What family does he have to explain to him why? What chance will he have to live anything like a normal life? He's likely to end up in prison.

But yep. All ok because their mum had rights.

What exactly do you want SS to do? I'm fairly sure most of us on this thread would think that such a mother should be offered support to make better choices, but it becomes a bit more difficult when the mother chooses not to access such support. What should happen then?

What do you think should have happened in that family, tequila? You've said the state should not step in, so... What? What do you want to happen!

That should have been a ? not a !

In that family? It's too late isn't it? What can be done?

Maybe a ton of money spent on ensuring that the 3 children get the best access to healthcare, education, psychologists, housing, support to get jobs? That's the least society can do I should think.

What should have been done at time? If the midwife had been aware of the mother's drinking at the booking in for the first pregnancy. What should have happened?

Yes absolutely, the children should have access to the very best support. The cuts are disgusting. I expect many of us in the thread feel that way. We should also not engage in batshit policy initiatives like helping them sue their mother, and use the money the state would have to provide for something less utterly pointless instead. Like better mental health provision...

Tableclothing

Maybe a concerted effort to get her to stop drinking and if that failed, after birth a more concerted effort to get her on long lasting contraception so that only 1 life is ruined rather than 3?

By all accounts she didn't want the children was too chaotic to use contraception so that would have been in her best interests too to support her in obtaining long term contraception rather than having 3 children taken into care.

“Maybe a ton of money spent on ensuring that the 3 children get the best access to healthcare, education, psychologists, housing, support to get jobs? That's the least society can do I should think.”

You completely disagreed with this when it was suggested earlier saying it wasn’t good enough.

@TulipsTulipsTulips I drank in my first pregnancy- one or two units a week as per the guidelines at the time. This is not only perfectly safe but is what the NHs told you is perfectly safe. However I still knowingly poisoned my body, as alcohol is a poison. Of course I’m not wicked and cruel

But yep. All ok because their mum had rights.

No, nobody said it was okay. But the mum DOES have rights. You haven’t explained how you believe those rights should change during pregnancy, so that that conversation wouldn’t be necessary. And you don’t know, so you? So this is rather a pointless, circular discussion.

Why would you though?

seaweedandmarchingbands

Because I'm presuming that these mother's don't know better or can't do better.

But we do know so I think, in discussions like these, the effects on the children should be included, rather than just keep saying "the rights of the mother".