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?

Unborn babies do not have rights, until birth. It's an uncomfortable truth, and to challenge it brings up ethical debate wider than just safeguarding a fetus from substance abuse, e.g. abortion, pregnancy where the child is known to have a life-limiting/life-threatening condition.

To do so would involve removing the basic human rights of the pregnant woman, which is also obviously morally wrong.

What would be better would be improved access/availability/quality of services to intervene and reduce maternal drug usage. I work in child health and countries with better mental health and substance abuse also have much lower rates of FAS and other considerations associated with drug/alcohol use.

I think a lot of people may agree with you in principle but not in practice.

Yes most people agree it's terrible to take drugs when you're pregnant. But women who do this are likely to be addicts suffering some sort of trauma. How are you actually proposing to stop them taking drugs? Literally? I can't think of any way to do so, as even if you agreed with imprisoning vulnerable women for example, most prisons even high security prisons have drugs, and there would be a detrimental effect on existing children, families, jobs etc that may exceed the risk. You'd have to literally chain people down. And fortunately we don't live in that kind of society

So how are you proposing this is enforced and harm to current children is minimised?

I remember in the US where they arrested a woman because she took MDMA and it killed the unborn child in her womb.

I agree with what the authorities did.

If a woman takes substances that she knows will damage the unborn child severely. She is a horrible person.

Also how do you determine who these women whose children are at risk, are? Not all alcohol drinkers and drug users are known to the authorities. Not all pregnant women in the early stages are known to the authorities. Are you proposing that all pregnant women have weekly alcohol and drug tests? That all known drug users and alcoholics have monthly pregnancy tests?

Whatever this thing is it's not a teacher. If it's a real human then that actually possesses this opinion they are clearly not educated enough to understand things like nuance or unintended consequence. It's is always the least intelligent amongst us that posit these black and white theories of how they think things should work
Absolutely no one is ok with women using harmful substances while pregnant but most of us understand the impossibility of enforcing our morals on people who exist outside most of our lived experience

What would you do with women who continued to smoke tobacco while pregnant or who lived with in a household where there are smokers and therefore were exposing the foetus to second hand smoke? Can you see that your draconian and dystopian views have a wider reach than just alcohol and street drugs? What about women who do not follow a healthy diet while pregnant, who do not attend antenatal appointments? Of course nobody thinks that using substances while pregnant is a good thing but as a society we can only advise, educate and support, not prohibit and detain.

I don't think YABU to want these sort of things. But in reality I don't think it could possibly work.

I have seen tik Toks from people who foster babies born addicted. What they describe for those little babies is horrendous. Withdrawals and needing methadone

The US where more and more states are either severely restricting abortion rights or taking them away completely.

There's also cases where women have been questioned and treated horrifically simply because they had a miscarriage but abortion is illegal where they are so they had to be sure it wasn't done on purpose.

The US is a great example of what happens when bodily autonomy is stripped away from women and it's horrific.

If a woman takes substances that she knows will damage the unborn child severely. She is a horrible person.

Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. Being a horrible person isn't a crime. A crime has only been committed if the fetus is afforded the status of personhood. Which we don't.

Also what about women who put their babies at other types of risk of harm when pregnant eg by not getting their pregnancy vaccinations, carrying out other risky activities during pregnancy (unprotected sex with multiple partners, dangerous sports, living with a violent abuser). Or not getting their newborns vaccinated against things like measles. Smoking in the same house as the baby. Etc- all risk factors for serious illnesses, injuries or death to unborn or newborn babies

You cannot be a primary teacher if you don’t know the difference between it’s and its (you said it’s wellbeing instead of its wellbeing). You also used an apostrophe when speaking about your nephews.

If you are actually a teacher, you ought to spend a bit of time improving your literacy.

Agree with the sentiment but no idea how you would put it into practice. Seems open to an abusive partner alleging drug taking, or indeed someone else with an axe to grind. Given how the police and justice system have effectively almost decriminalised rape and other offences towards women, cannot see it happening.

I found when pg there was a huge amount of public monitoring of what I ate and drank - and I was doing everything right - most of it turns out to be poorly researched and often on well avoiding can't harm stance.
(Radio 4 more or less dis program on this)

Are women from 10 to 50 going to under constantly monitoring just in case - as most of the people I know who drank during pg did so when unaware about being pg.

I watch a YouTube video with US obgyn person explaining why they don't let women in labour eat or drink in USA - it's because the tiny % that may need general anaesthetic and small risk of aspiration so that enough to mean most laboring women in states are denied even drinks.

With illegal drugs well that often addiction and needs medical support - it's not good or even legal they are being taken in first place let alone during pg.

It's tragic but the reality of what you're proposing would be a class based discrimination. Poor people would have their kids taken away. Middle class women would be hiding their drinking etc. And all the issues would just be 'of who knows why DC turned out like that"...

So what do you propose @Caterpillarsleftfoot??

That if a woman is known to take drugs and is pregnant we keep her locked up against her will and without consent?

We force her to go through withdrawal? With potentially deadly consequences for them both?

I still more fear stress and anxiety on her and the unborn child?

No-one is OKAY with knowing mothers are harming their unborn children. Don't be silly.

As another PP said, I am shocked a teacher cannot see the issue with your current stance??

I agree with you OP. Imagine a situation where say, a 39 week pg woman takes so many drugs that the baby is seriously injured. One week later, just because the baby isn’t inside her body, she’d go to prison (one would hope) for GBH.

Just because an unborn baby/foetus (whatever you choose to call this human being) has no rights, doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t. It’s unworkable I know, but I strongly believe that a baby has rights. If a baby is born prematurely at 30 weeks it has rights …it shouldn’t make any difference where that baby resides.

I’m not sure why this has to have anything to do with ASD. My family all have ASD.

This. Either we have it, or we don't.

Also, some research suggests that men should not drink alcohol and/or take drugs when trying to conceive, as this affects the quality of the sperm. Why aren't we locking them up too?

What a sinister suggestion.

Excellent comment. I used to work in commissioning drug and alcohol services. One of the most effective and successful services we commissioned was a team of Drugs Liaison Midwives who had specialist knowledge in the area of problematic drug and alcohol use. They worked closely and intensively in a non-judgemental way with pregnant women who had substance use problems. It worked well, not always of course, but a far better approach then being punative

The trouble is, once you accept something like this, it's a very steep slippery slope that can very quickly affect ALL women and girls of childbearing age, and lead to things like women being prosecuted for miscarriages (which does happen in some Latin American countries). My cousin had a baby earlier this year - she had no idea she was pregnant until 6 months in. What then? Do we treat all women as "potentially pregnant" and ban all women from drinking?

What about women who eat rare steak whilst pregnant, or have a hot bath, or clean their cat's litter tray, all of which can cause birth defects.

The logical conclusion of this kind of thing is a Handmaid's Tale Gilead-type situation where all women have their rights restricted on the basis that they are "potentially pregnant", and all confirmed pregnant women are placed under constant surveillance with a state-approved diet and activity regime.

Theoretically yes. Logistically no.

What would it do to the mental and physical health of a person you're able to physically prevent from taking drugs?

Surely better support for addiction is the answer?

Some things we don't know but some people believe/worry will harm a fetus: painkillers e.g. over the counter paracetamol; any amount of alcohol at all; cheese; processed meat; sugar; salad (toxoplasmosis from inadequate washing off of soil); plastic; air pollution.

How exactly are you going to decide what goes under bodily autonomy and what doesn't?

So lets just lock women up instead of addressing the problems behind addiction. What a completely stupid idea.

Not to forget of course the fact that punitive measures are most likely to scare drug users away from seeking help, making them counterproductive.

Not the same but when I was pregnant with my second they had introduced carbon monoxide testing at every single antenatal appointment to pick up smoking. I did the tests at the first 2 appointment which came back clear and then refused to do the others. I have never smoked and exerted my right to refuse the test. By doing two I felt I had shown that I had nothing to hide but didn't want to engage in pointless tests at every other appointment.

We were in a trial area - and MW were insisting it wasn't just for smoking it was just in case gas appliance weren't working properly as well but we'd also just had all our serviced but they still insisted - neither of us has every smoked but felt they just weren't listening to us.

But this is already enforced if midwifes know. If someone admits to drinking or drugs social services monitor them. If they hide it and noone reports them how could anyone know?