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?

*In the end, DD was perfectly healthy, weaned off the opiates in 48 hours, didn't inherit DH's condition - she does have ADHD and dyslexia but so do over 50% of her cousins and I am told it is almost certainly genetics and not antenatal meds at fault. She's also high IQ and talented musically.

Should I have been banned from having her OP?*

Tricky. But an easy one to answer is a cat. Do you have one as this should have been banned due to risk of toxoplasmosis? Any pregnant woman who does not surrender her cat immediately, should be held in a secure facility with no cats. Or maybe the cats should all be held in the secure facility? Tricky.

Yet it's fine to completely dismiss bodily autonomy?

Do we really want our country to be the next US where in some states women are arrested because they've had miscarriages because abortions are illegal?

In theory, no woman should put this kind of thing into their body but sadly, if they choose to so, there's not a lot society can do about it apart from try to offer help and support to stop.

Doing what you suggest would be deprivation of liberty and that is only permitted if someone commits a crime and goes to prison or if someone is sectioned under the mental health act.

How is this any different to someone who decides to continue a pregnancy knowing the child will need multiple operations or be born into a life of pain?

I don't think OP actually gives a flying fuck about these women at all. Surely the kindest thing would be to offer (not force) them rehab (rather than just detox). Even better to tackle the societal issues that lead women (and men for that matter) to start using drugs/drinking in the first place.

Yet another example of how women are deemed worthless. An unborn foetus with no legal rights at all taking precedence over a human being.

Some of the responses are ridiculous. Suggesting taking heroine while pregnant is the same as having a cat. Please.
Social services assess risk for kids everyday. And when the risk reaches a certain threshold children are removed from their parents. Surely it would be assessed in the same way. A parent who gets drunk does not have their kid removed. A parent who takes heroine and leaves paraphernalia all over the kitchen table does. Same here. If they are committing serious risk to the baby then something should be done. Call it child abuse and arrest them.

I agree with this, and the consequences would be terrible. I know three women who concealed their pregnancies; one was fine and so was her baby. One gave birth to a baby with severe brain damage. One died in a pool of her own blood, completely alone. And none of them had any kind of addiction issues.

It would also prevent women who wanted help with their addictions from seeking help if they knew the result was forcible confinement.

I am not talking about abortion. I am talking about a woman who continues with a pregnancy whilst knowingly taking substances that she is well aware will severely damage a baby and result in them being born with a lifelong disability.

Why would that be a prerequisite to having an opinion on bodily autonomy?

I doubt anyone thinks it's acceptable but being swayed by emotion to remove the rights of a woman in favour of a human that has not been born yet is very authoritarian.

Where do you draw the line on the state intervening to prevent harm? How about children being taken into care because their parents feed them too much junk food?

What everyone else said about bodily autonomy and it not being ethical to imprison women for what they put into their own bodies, but ALSO child protection plans can be put on unborn babies and babies do get removed from birth for this reason.

If you agree with the OP, you would be taking away bodily autonomy from women which several people are dismissing.

That includes abortion because how does a foetus have the same rights as a born baby and abortion stay legal?

Again, it's easy to throw out emotive language and talk about the poor babies born addicted to drugs but no one, including OP, has yet to explain how it would work logically.

Because it wouldn't.

I'm still waiting for anyone to tell me step by step logistically how this would work
Not the ethics or anything
just practically
how they would do this

It's not the same, but where do you stop?

If you're going to deprive a woman of her liberty because what she's doing might harm a foetus, then obviously abortion is banned. Is it all drugs, or just heroin? What about prescribed medications that might be harmful but she needs? How much alcohol can she consume without being imprisoned? How are you going to police what amounts she's drinking? What about smokers? What about her diet, what if she just keeps on eating that delicious soft cheese listeria risk? Too much tuna - oh the mercury! What if she has no-one else who can clear out the kitty litter? What if she keeps riding or some other potentially dangerous activity?

Or is just women with addictions we can dehumanise and deprive of their rights?

It must be the case that people don’t always know if a woman is taking drugs during her pregnancy. On a different note OP I hope your ‘nephew’s’ was an autocorrect error given that you are a teacher.

Yes, this! How exactly would you enforce it without making women and girls of childbearing age (so 12-50) live in a complete police state?

People are making it sound like an easy choice. That these mothers just don't love their children enough and that stopping an addiction is easy.

I disagree. Nobody should have complete body atonamy. What about children hurting themselves, what sbojt women who are mental unwell. Men raping others. Do you they deserve body autonomy?

some of these supposedly ‘pro women’ posters are horrific.

👏provide the support before they become pregnant. Invest in the mental health services so they can give more than the reactive service currently provided.

With your plan I'd be curious about what you think should happen to the incubator once the baby is born 🤔

OP your idea is ethically and intellectually bankrupt. It’s an erosion of the rights of women (I note you also support a significant reduction in access to abortion too). In addition (though by no means the most significant concern) your plan would be logistically almost impossible to police and enforce.

It greatly troubles me that someone who thinks in such a reductive, reactionary and unsophisticated way is trusted to teach.

And yes, I have seen babies withdrawing from opiates. Its awful. Doesn’t mean the OP’s view is right. In my opinion it’s depressing and disheartening that even as many of a quarter of the people polled here think it’s a good idea.

Look I kind of see where OP is coming from here, but I think maybe it was worded indelicately! I agree that women should have bodily autonomy and shouldn't be locked up whilst pregnant.

I think the more important question is HOW TO WE BREAK THE CYCLE?? How to we break the cycle of children being born, taken away, another child being born to the same mum, being taken away.

These women (in the main) are vulnerable and need support to be able to break the cycle of this abuse. The absolute vast majority of babies being removed from mothers now isn't drugs, it's because the mother is vulnerable and she has a controlling, violent (usually male) partner.

I have seen examples over and over again, it's heartbreaking. These mothers aren't monsters who never think about their child again once it's adopted, but they just can't seem to break out of the cycle. One recent example was a 23 year old gave birth to her 4th child - all of them have been fostered or adopted.

Lelophants
Rape is not an example of bodily autonomy!

No like you said you can't lock everyone up but surely you can impose a law that drug abuse during pregnancy can and will lead to your baby immediately being taken away? I mean if they are going to abuse their own babies before birth then why do they deserve a chance as parents to continue to neglect and abuse these babies? It should be very clear and simple, no alcohol, drug etc abuse while pregnant (proved by blood tests) or you lose the baby. Then they still have a choice to carry on using but they forfeit the privilege of keeping their baby. I do feel the same about smoking and obesity to be honest. People with smoking and eating addictions should be offered the chance to really try and change their smoking a eating habits whilst pregnant and going forwards for the child's and their own sakes. The same for the alcohol and drugs really but the onus should really be put onto the person to put the effort in to work hard with their doctors/midwives etc to cut out/severely reduce this, to prove they do want to change and be good parents.

YABVU

we do not live in a police state.

Women have the right to be unhealthy, to drink alcohol to excess, to commit suicide - even if they are pregnant. Thankfully most women will exercise caution when pregnant, but in this country it is their choice.

They also may have to make difficult decisions about legal drugs and their own health whilst pregnant.

I hope you are just on a wind-up because your attitude is medieval.

But the baby has no choice. Sadly society has to mop up the mess made by these individuals

No. I believe the ends do not justify the means.

NRTFT but how do you propose to do that?