Women should be prevented from drug taking in pregnancy

[Caterpillarsleftfoot]

I have just come back from a holiday with my nephew's who were exposed to drugs in utero (adopted). I'm also a school teacher who has taught drug and alcohol exposed children.

Seeing the challenges they face made me think why on earth it is allowed.

If you hurt your child every day when they are 6 months, 2 years, 5 years old then they are removed from your care. Why are you allowed to hurt an unborn baby? If a woman is known to take drugs or daily alcohol, then why is she not taken into a protective custody in a hospital/ secure unit for the remainder of the pregnancy to prevent her harming the child?

It's not eugenics, regardless. Not sure anyone even mentioned that.

The thread is literally about taking women into "protective custody" if they drink daily 🙄If that's not the state trying to enforce what women put into their bodies, I don't know what is.

I like the fact there's logically consistency though.

If a woman has a right to an abortion (kill the fetus) she also has a right to take substances that severely damage the fetus and mean once born the child grows up with health issues and has a lower quality of life.

The issue though is no one can explain how it would work practically because it just isn't possible.

It's a solution suggested purely based from an emotive, black & white viewpoint with no basis in logic or any possible unintended consequences.

Yes. The vast majority of women do try to stop smoking, stop taking recreational drugs if they did, stop/reduce drinking, take folic acid, make someone else clear out the kitty litter and avoid whatever foods advised, etc etc.

You shouldn't remove the rights and self-determination of an entire group of people because of the actions of a few, generally vulnerable, ones.

People love to try to control women's bodies, but rarely want to support those women to have children or the children themselves. It's like these groups that are worried about the drop in birth rates - they're all about banning contraception and limiting women's choices - definitely not about offering better social structures for having families, like cheap childcare etc.

One of the serious issues legally and in human rights is the right of the "fetus" v the right of the woman carrying it. The big majority of women will do everything in their power to stop their developing baby from harm. But in doing that, they give away personal rights freedoms, the right to eat, drink or have drugs when the father of the fetus doesn't need to give up those rights.

To make it worse for a woman, a fetus not being born, is given the status of a "baby" when it hasn't being born yet. There are thousands of still births that some stupid misogynistic laws are trying to make it equivalent to children born alive at 3, 6 o4 9 months by giving them the same human rights.

NO ONE can prevent a fetus for being still born at full gestation. And yet some arseholes want to grant not living beings the same rights as the mothers carrying them. It's beyond logic and comprehension.

The issue though is no one can explain how it would work practically because it just isn't possible.

I have no idea because I'm not suggesting it, only saying that trying to prevent women from abusing drugs isn't eugenics.

The way we have it now, where you either accept help or SS may seek removal, is the best option.

It goes back to talking about the slippery slope and unintended consequences.

It might not start as eugenics but it could most definitely end up there because if we limit the rights of women, it wouldn't just stop at 'undesirable' women who are 'othered' in society that's for sure.

I think it's easy for someone like OP to agree to it if they believe (incorrectly) that it wouldn't eventually lead to them losing their rights too.

It always does. We should learn from history, not repeat it.

We should have proactive preventative health care that actively seeks out women who are dependent on drugs or alcohol and, with informed consent, seek to give long lasting contraceptive, with active follow-up (HCP banging on their front door if necessary) when it is time for next injection/implant/coil change.

Beyond that bodily autonomy of women takes absolute priority, and the mere suggestion of living in a society where that is not the case fills me with horror, however well intentioned it seemingly is.

To be clear @BasicBinaryBitch I am the one who brought up eugenics

Specifically to a post that suggested coercing women with addiction into long term contraception

You are acting like all the posts against the OPs original posts are saying its eugenics no one said that

Giving women support, counselling, access to rehab etc for example is not eugenics and no one has suggested it is

If we banned all cars we would have far fewer road deaths but would also destroy the utility and freedoms of the majority. Women have won the right to bodily autonomy after years of struggles and we should not argue that this is removed due to the actions of a minority.

What is required is better education, support, counselling and help for women who are abusing alcohol and drugs rather than a knee-jerk prohibition and removal of the rights of the majority to have control of their lives and their bodies.

they give away personal rights freedoms, the right to eat, drink or have drugs when the father of the fetus doesn't need to give up those rights

Exactly this. If you lock up the mum, you lock up the dad as well. Fair's fair.

"Shock horro I've also had a drink when pregnant. But if it's to the point where it will cause harm to a soon-to-be-born baby - not a fetus that is going to be terminated - then there is absolutely an argument to be had for stronger intervention."

As several other PPs have pointed out, by the time the baby is soon to be born, the FAS horse bolted months ago. The "It's a foetus! No, it's umborn baby!" argument is moot. At the point the vast majority of the damage in the vast majority of cases was sustained, it was neither: it was more correctly termed an embryo - less than an inch long and for most of this period indistinguishable from a rat or a horse by the average person looking at a picture ( 2-8 weeks probably; from 0-2 weeks it would more likely simply fail to implant/miscarry- no harm no foul, unless you're one of those particularly keen people who think every sperm is sacred).

This article explains it well:
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/developmental-timeline-alcohol-induced-birth-defects

Ie the damage can be done before a lot of women are sure they're pregnant. So in practice, to prevent FAS, you'd have to force contraceptive implants or coils on (or forcibly anaesthetise and perform tubal ligation or ovariohysterectomy on) any woman who met whatever criteria you decided made her a booze risk, and harshly punish and probably imprison any of these women who tried to remove the implant or evade detection in the first place.

As a PP has also alluded to, what medical professional is going to inject an implant into the arm of a woman in chains, or force a coil through the cervix of a woman whose arms and legs are bound the bed, or render a screaming restrained woman unconscious then lift a scalpel?
(Or even, in fact, perform any of these procedures on anyone without informed, signed consent- consent being by definition uncoerced). To override the consent issue, I believe, would require an ethics meeting for each individual to declare them mentally incompetent to decide to refuse treatment, decide that forced sterilisation is in their best interests and obtain a court order to do so. I would think that the vast vast majority of cases would fail to meet these thresholds and the medics won't be queuing up to facilitate it.

Re: medics unwilling to get with the programme- remember the furore over immigrants over 18 claiming to be children to get into the UK? Apparently the most accurate/feasible method of determining age was dental Xrays to look at the size of the pulp cavity which narrows with age. I thought that was a neat solution- till somebody pointed out that dentists and radiologists were likely to tell Immigration to get tae fuck with their forced diagnostic procedures.

...the state can't start dictating what people put in their bodies...

I assume that everybody who feels this way was thoroughly against the idea of COVID vaccine mandates back in the day.
Would be awfully hypocritical if they weren't.

I'm going to disagree with other posters, and agree with you OP.

Get some bloody subtlety in your thinking, people. "Slippery slope" is the name of a fallacy for a reason. And just because something is moderately difficult to enforce doesn't mean we should do nothing.

Going by the "logic" on display here murder should be legal because "if we ban people from killing other people we might as well say it's illegal to kill anything and then we'll all starve" and "some murders are basically impossible to detect so what's the point?"

Could you explain how it would work? No one else can.

The fact of the matter is a foetus doesn't have human rights until birth and unless you want that to change, it wouldn't be possible to implement.

and that's without starting on the expense, where all these spaces in hospitals/secure units are coming from and the well known staff shortages.

What I'm genuinely interested in, is people's opinion on child protection laws in general if this slippery slope is being quoted.

Surely the same argument applies that no child should ever be removed from their birth parents care for neglect because who is to say where the line is between someone's house bring messier than yours and the children's diets being substandard and actual harm? Surely that's a slippery slope to only middle class families with maids and gardeners being able to keep their children?

It's the same argument is it not?

I did answer the question about enforcement. People are being ridiculous saying that no woman aged 12-50 can ever buy wine again. It would be about a referral to social care to be investigated exactly the same way families where neglect or abuse is suspected.

But we aren't talking about born children. We are talking about foetus' who have no human rights by law until birth.

They have some protection after 24 weeks but by then any damage due to drugs/alcohol is already done so you aren't saving them from any harm.

@SouthLondonMum22 A law to ban drugs as they have done in some Asian countries? Making it illegal for pregnant women to consume drugs perhaps. I know I'm going to get a lot of backlash for this but tired of this whole "unborn fetus doesn't have rights" spiel. The toll that it takes on the child outweighs it for me.

and for me it goes back to either a woman has bodily autonomy or she doesn't.

It's also about where would it end?

Do we make smoking illegal for pregnant women?
Do we make alcohol illegal for pregnant women?
Do we make eating any known listeria risks illegal for pregnant women?

How would that be able to happen when legally, a woman has more rights than a foetus? Should that be changed? If so then say goodbye to safe, legal abortions.

I completely agree with @SouthLondonMum22

My other concern with going down this route would be - if pregnant women aren’t allowed to do things that are going to harm their baby, it’s a short step then to mandating abortion if the baby isn’t 100% healthy.

@SouthLondonMum22 Nothing to do with abortion but safeguarding children. Convenient to meld it into one for the sake of an argument but other countries example Singapore have done this and yes abortjon is legal there.

"Get some bloody subtlety in your thinking, people. "Slippery slope" is the name of a fallacy for a reason. And just because something is moderately difficult to enforce doesn't mean we should do nothing."

Ok then- get some bloody detail in your thinking, Zodfa. You're cross because we're not Doing Something, or at least not feeling bad about not Doing Something. What's your plan for an ethically acceptable, practically workable solution that will achieve the desired outcome (fewer cases of FAS, fewer newborns having to be weaned off opiates etc) without causing more suffering elsewhere via the law of unintended consequences.