controlling women during pregnancy

[Rollon2012]

I've heard a few comments over the years about the hole teetotal during pregnancy thing is not about healthy babies but used to control women.

I wondered straight away , do feminists share this view?
im on the fence generally , although I went cold turkey smoking wise (threw my fags in the bin on the way out of the surgery after getting results) never smoked since and didn't drink at all.

Or is it an excuse the pg women who dont have the willpower to abstain for drinking for 9 months to make themselves feel better??

just wondering what your views on this, (I appreciate it may be a sensitive subject)

Well i don't get what you mean then. Nothing happened to taking to the streets as those events I mentioned take place regularly enough.

agents of the patriarchy going on strike perhaps? nurses (who are mainly women) wanting a change to how things are taught?

Very interesting question.

I think that loading responsibility onto the individual is also a way of loading blame onto that person if anything goes wrong.

Telling someone else what they should do is very easy when it doesn't affect you (eg, easy [in theory ] to boot DC off to bed by 9.30, and I should follow shortly after but many nights I'm still faffing around on here at 1am).

So by making women who smoke or drink during pregnancy utter social pariahs is easier than closing down all coal-fired power stations or banning disposable batteries, both of which spew toxins into the ecosystem and get into foetuses just as surely as any Silk Cut. It's quite possible that this is because men enjoy the benefits of coal-fired power stations and AA batteries.

I mean, we're all told not to eat tuna while pregnant because it's full of mercury. What about not bloody putting it there in the first place?

women also enjoy the benefits of coal power stations and AA batteries

you're going round in circles...what point are you making carpetmistress?

ninedragons that's a very interesting perspective. I would like to see studies on how environmental factors affect foetus'. Hmm. I wonder do they exist?

read the earlier posts sal and you'll see my point

Yes, they do. But by and large the political (and economic) power to get rid of them lies with men.

I did carpet and I answered them so now you're starting making the same statements again. circles.

And my point is that it's easy for men to say hey, lady, YOU do this and YOU do that, without looking at things that perhaps WE ALL should be doing to protect foetuses. It's making the welfare of the foetus entirely the responsibility of the mother, which it's actually not.

I am sure there are studies out there. I read something years ago that completely horrified me - according to this article (and I couldn't find a citation now, this was years ago), the breastmilk of Inuit women met the definition for toxic waste, because fish is such a large part of their diet.

that's terrible about the Inuit