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?

Dw @Caterpillarsleftfoot a few sensible people with hearts are with you.

A foetus is not a child.

Wow. This is… offensive. So my unborn child right now isn’t a child? It’s semantics. Of course it’s a child! The op is talking about women who were seriously damaging their bodies up until birth. How can you not care about these children?

You just sound a bit igorant. It’s only not a child if you don’t want it. You do realise that women who have abortions aren’t stupid and still know it’s a child right? Don’t minimise something so serious. I dread to think about your views in other situations.

I care about women's bodily autonomy. You cannot start giving the foetus, or unborn child if you prefer, rights that conflict with that without threatening women's reproductive rights.

Of course it's a bad outcome if a child is born with conditions that may have been avoidable, but it's a worse outcome to roll back women's rights as a whole. The vast majority of women make responsible choices in pregnancy. It's shortsighted and foolish in the extreme to put in rules that threaten all women's bodily autonomy for the sake of a few, often very vulnerable women who make bad choices.

I think you make good points op. People are deliberately misunderstanding you.

Social services and mental health (and prison) are good examples of where we take away human rights. It's possible to do so without abusing it, as we and most countries already do.

Can people just debate the topic at hand without getting into very tedious semantics? Or even more tedious 'where will it end' theories?

Because a foetus isn't a born child with human rights.

But not a good example of taking away human rights to protect a potential life with no human rights?

Where are people deliberately misunderstanding the OP? Some posters are disagreeing with the OP, that is in no way the same as deliberately misunderstanding the OP.

Can people just debate the topic at hand without getting into very tedious semantics? Or even more tedious 'where will it end' theories

So by debate you actually mean no debate, as you don't like all the potential avenues of the debate?

Those where will it end theories are because you can look at history and you can look at other countries and you can see issues with removing womens rights. It's incredibly short sighted to call that tedious

I agree in principle, as someone who was born 3 months prematurely as a result of my birth mum being on heroin. In reality, her life was very difficult and her decisions to take recreational drugs was a result of what she was dealing with in order to cope.

I'm still living with the consequences of what happened with being weaned off heroin and born prematurely but I am very fortunate that I was given the opportunity to live the best possible life I could, being adopted.

I'm pretty sure that enforcing all pregnant women to not take drugs isn't a panacea to the perceived issues you may be thinking it will solve. And as others have said, it would be neigh on impossible to enforce.

Abortions wouldn't be legal if children were being aborted.

Not sure pp is the ignorant one here.

Those children are statistically more likely to grow up to have problems with alcohol and drugs. We care about their bodily autonomy and their rights. The OP wants to lock them up.

If you actually care about those children then you would be sitting with those of us advocating for therapy, counselling and rehabilitation not punitive measures and punishment.

Because the first step in social services involvement is to try to help parents get things back on track so that they can actually keep their children. They are only permanently removed as a last resort although I've seen cases where children have been removed due to age (young and more likely to be adopted due to demand) and that parent who is now sober can never get that child back. What you're suggesting just wouldn't work. Infact you'd be putting already vulnerable and traumatised women at higher risk of overdose if they have the baby and then start using again due to the pain of what you'd put them through on top of losing their child.

It's extremely difficult to detain someone and for very, very good reason. Historically the right to detain women has been regularly abused so we know that its a dangerous and easily exploited road to go down. We also know that people struggling with their mental health do better in the community long term than in enforced care. Your solution is oversimplistic and clouded by your care for your nephews. I understand its difficult to see the mum when you're looking at two children who have been impacted but she's in desperate pain as well.

And also this^

There was a woman in the south of Ireland a few years ago who died because her doctor refused her an abortion even though her life was in danger. Being pregnant is a medical condition. Having an addiction needs specialist medical management. Womens medical care cannot be based solely on what's best for a foetus. It's dangerous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Savita_Halappanavar

I always wonder if the generally anti-women's bodily autonomy people give a damn about such things.

How can you not care about these children?

The OP is suggesting incarceration for the pregnant women until birth

Pregnant women in prison are 5 times more likely to experience a stillbirth than women in the community

Pregnant women in prison are almost twice as likely to give birth prematurely as women in the general population, which puts both mothers and babies at risk

1 in 10 pregnant women in prison give birth in a cell or on the way to hospital

At least 2 babies have died in women’s prisons in the past 3 years

How can you not care about these children and instead actively want to put them in a more dangerous situation?

Who says they don’t care? You can care, and simultaneously disagree with the notion that locking up pregnant women is an acceptable way to express said sentiment.

Women who are seriously damaging their bodies as well as their unborn child

Stop and think about what you wrote

Would anyone in their right mind actually do that ?

We used to lock up women with post natal depression and women who liked sex; and here we still are talking about k locking up women who need psychological help

Some years ago, I (paramedic) attended to women who had just been handed a custodial sentenced for smuggling cigarettes (so basically tax evasion and definitely non violent). She was eastern European, non English speaking and 8 months pregnant.

She became unwell in the holding cells. It was unclear what was wrong especially with the language barrier, maybe an extreme anxiety response, maybe preterm labour, maybe something more sinister.

The guards (from a well known company contracted by the government) bought her out to my ambulance cuffed and wanted her to remain cuft on the ambulance. I saw red, told them absolutely no way was I transporting a possibly labouring women in handcuffs, but that they were more than welcome to double up on guards travelling with us. They initially argued and then when I wouldn't back down insisted on wasting time calling a manager.

Based on my prealert, the hospital felt that she warranted being seen immediately in resus by an obstetrician, so taking it pretty bloody serious. I didn't find out the final outcome, we rarely do (it's very frustrating).

I was shocked at the way the prison staff/security staff wanted to treat her, it was barbaric. They were both young women, so I hope if they've gone on to have kids of their own they've had time to reflect on their behaviour.

No wonder women and their babies are dying in UK prisons.

All the people on here who think it is okay to lock up women for not 'behaving' as they deem acceptable in pregnancy, shame on you.

Yeah, except we don’t routinely lock up drug users, despite the harm they do to themselves. Removing someone’s liberty isn’t, and shouldn’t be, something easily done.

Pregnant women are individuals. A baby is not an individual, a legal person, until birth when it separates the mother. Women do in fact retain their rights as autonomous adults, pregnant or not.

That was an absolutely tragic case, but a large part of it was down to medical incompetence. The hospital didn't monitor her properly and consequently didn't realise her life was in danger until it was too late. If it had been clear earlier that her life was indeed in danger (as it should have been if they hadn't messed up) they would have performed the abortion.

At that time abortion was legal in Ireland if the mother's life was in danger. The problem for doctors at the time was, of course, that outcomes are not always clear cut. But in this particular case the correct course of action, which included abortion, should have been clear if they had monitored properly. Tragically they didn't do this.

Well you say we don't lock up drug users routinely but only yesterday someone was saying on this site that they should be locked up for life

We also tended not to lock up mentally ill men in the same way as we did women - it's just a continuation of the age old theme of women being slightly less than anyone else - men, male child , female child , woman

People say a lot of things, doesn’t mean we do it. We’re not, after all, actually locking up pregnant drug users because they’re pregnant, are we?

I’m not sure any of that is an argument for increasing detention.

Why aren't you addressing the points about children having human rights and our children's act enshrining in law the responsibilities towards the child, but that law doesn't exist for babies in the womb? Can't you see that the writing of that law would be removing body autonomy for pregnant women because it would have to include any possible harm? The system of specialist MW works best. Women can be honest and get support. Of course your plan would mean silence on women's part, not just for addiction but also DV, MH even some hobbies etc. This adds an extra dimension to revealing a pregnancy, which as said would do more harm. You can't do something like incarcerate the Mother without it doing harm to the foetus, her stress levels would cause ketone issues and she'd have to be given a replacement which can do harm. Then there's time scales and existing children. The majority of babies born to addicted Mother's don't have severe issues, so for what this would cost and what it could do, isn't worth how it would change the law around being pregnant.

I am not supporting the locking up of people

I would like them to have proper support however

suggesting locking women up is highly regressive but also so much a part of recent history

Since I seem to be misinterpreting things I'll leave you to it