Should drinking alcohol during pregnancy be a crime?

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Valid point

Abortion involves destroying a fetus. The procedure may include bleeding, crying and decapitation among other things. A fetus is not a human being, however.

However, "Mothers". pregnant women, etc ARE human beings, and their own rights are being disregarded for no actual good reason. But the pro-life guys don't seem to worry about living human beings, only prospective things that may become in them.

some data pertinent to this discussion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_syndrome, quote:
An analysis of seven medical research studies involving over 130,000 pregnancies found that consuming two to 14 drinks per week did not significantly increase the risk of giving birth to a child with either malformations or fetal alcohol syndrome.[35] Pregnant women who consume approximately 18 drinks per day have a 30-33% chance of having a baby with FAS.[34]

A number of studies have shown that light drinking (1-2 drinks/week) during pregnancy does not appear to pose a risk to the fetus.[36][37][38][39] A study of pregnancies in eight European countries found that consuming no more than one drink per day did not appear to have any effect on fetal growth.

A follow-up of children at 18 months of age found that those from women who drank during pregnancy, even two drinks per day, scored higher in several areas of development,[40] though in a different study, a linear dose-response relationship was seen between prenatal alcohol exposure and arithmetic scores at age 6.[41]

So limited alcohol consumption during pregnancy is statistically unlikely to have negative effects.

http://www.marchofdimes.com/Pregnancy/a ... depth.html, quote:
Small amounts of alcohol do get into breastmilk and are passed on to the baby. One study found that breastfed babies of women who had one or more drinks a day were a little slower in acquiring motor skills (such as crawling and walking) than babies who had not been exposed to alcohol (12). Large amounts of alcohol may interfere with ejection of milk from the breast.

For these reasons, the March of Dimes recommends that women not drink alcohol while they are breastfeeding. Similarly, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that breastfeeding mothers not drink alcohol (13). However, according to the AAP, an occasional alcoholic drink probably doesn’t hurt the baby, but a mother who has a drink should wait at least 2 hours before breastfeeding her baby (13).

so it's not just during pregnancy - if a woman breastfeeds for 2 years, it's going to be ~3 years without drinking alcohol. While not a hardship per se, it is a pretty significant behavioral adjustment for most adult women.

http://www.marchofdimes.com/pregnancy/a ... oking.html
Not only is smoking harmful to you, it's also harmful to your baby during pregnancy. When you smoke during pregnancy, your baby is exposed to dangerous chemicals like nicotine, carbon monoxide and tar. These chemicals can lessen the amount of oxygen that your baby gets. Oxygen is very important for helping your baby grow healthy. Smoking can also damage your baby's lungs.

Women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to have:

* An ectopic pregnancy
* Vaginal bleeding
* Placental abruption (placenta peels away, partially or almost completely, from the uterine wall before delivery)
* Placenta previa (a low-lying placenta that covers part or all of the opening of the uterus)
* A stillbirth

Babies born to women who smoke during pregnancy are more likely to be born:

* With birth defects such as cleft lip or palate
* Prematurely
* At low birthweight
* Underweight for the number of weeks of pregnancy

Babies born prematurely and at low birthweight are at risk of other serious health problems, including lifelong disabilities (such as cerebral palsy, mental retardation and learning problems), and in some cases, death.

Secondhand smoke
Breathing in someone else's smoke is also harmful. Secondhand smoke during pregnancy can cause a baby to be born at low birthweight. Secondhand smoke is also dangerous to young children. Babies exposed to secondhand smoke:

* Are more likely to die from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome)
* Are at greater risk for asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, ear infections, respiratory symptoms
* May experience slow lung growth

So, while we're talking about limiting women's otherwise-legal behavior while they're pregnant, we should outlaw smoking-while-knocked-up, too.
And, since negative effects can happen before a woman even knows that she's pregnant, we should outlaw these behaviors in women of childbearing age because they're just 'pre-pregnant,' and unfortunately I'm not making that last bit up:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00875.html
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/2 ... e-of-mine/
http://shadesong.livejournal.com/2871261.html, quote:
I have been unable to obtain adequate medical care for my epilepsy because I am what they'd call pre-pregnant. As my neurologist puts it, I am a woman of child-bearing age. As such, they flat-out refuse to try me on any medicines other than the ones proven least likely to affect a fetus (read: the ones that are paying off my neurologist). Despite the fact that I have declared my belly a no-fetus zone.

My neurologist does not trust me to not get pregnant. My neurologist puts a potential fetus's potential health over my health.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/01 ... -pregnant/
http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-righ ... -pregnant/

Here's another relevant article. Why is this being reported in a Brittish newspaper, but not in the U.S.?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ju ... er-charges

Does a woman's right to kill her unborn child extend all the way to negligent homicide?

It's always dangerous to use wikipedia as a source without checking references. For example, in one of the references:


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8800397

In other words, one drink per day during pregnancy is enough to cause problems for the child.


Taking care of a child is an even bigger behavioral adjustment. Women having children should be prepared to make major adjustments.


No; it should at most apply to smoking during a pregnancy that leads to a child. If the pregnancy is terminated before birth, no actual person other than the smoker is harmed, so that shouldn't be illegal.

Last edited by psychohist on 07 Jul 2011, 6:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think there is a question of intent here.

If you happen to live in a locale where killing your unborn child is legal, that essentially means that the state has decided that harming a foetus with intent to kill is accepted under law, and perhaps then only under certain circumstances or with certain methods.

I'm not here to say that this is wrong. I think it's a woman's own personal choice whether to commit prenatal infantacide.

But this law perhaps says nothing about negligently harming a foetus with no intent, or harming a foetus with intent to kill, disfigure, or render stupid.

This basically seems to imply that if we wish to look at this from a legal standpoint, we have to either clarify explicitly each instance when killing a child is permissible, or clarify when we consider it to be a person or not.

Keep in mind here that a large percentage of fertilized eggs do not lead to a viable pregnancy and are quite naturally aborted by the womb.

"Prenatal infanticide" is an oxymoron. If it hasn't been born yet, it isn't an infant.

"Prenatal feticide", maybe.

A fetus is not a person so killing a fetus is not murder. It is not even homicide.

Definition of homicde:


1. The killing of one person by another.
2. A person who kills another person.

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 07 Jul 2011, 7:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Tomayto, tomahto. Having a Y chromosome and lacking a sexual partner, I have the luxury of acting as a disinterested spectator.

Having a right to do something horrible (neccisary though it may be) doesn't imply a right to be protected from hearing other's opinions about it.

This isn't about abortion per se, rather just abuse with potential fatal consequences - but still, the question of "when is it a person" comes up.

One also has to wonder whether there is an implication of whether women with certain physiological shortcomings should be encouraged to sterilize themselves or avoid sexual contact, as pregnancy itself would pose an unreasonable threat to a theoretical person.

Edit: For the record i favor revolutionizing the adoption process to make it easier for people who want children but can't procreate to adopt infants. But i have no suggestions for how to crack that nut - I have just met too many people who waited for years to adopt a (white) baby, and seen too many screwed up kids in the foster system who were raised by parents who were unwilling, unprepared, unable, or any combination of the three.

I think you've missed that women won't KNOW they're pregnant during the first month of pregnancy (most doctors declare that the previous menstruation is the date of the start of the pregnancy) - this means women who have no intention of having children STILL have to make a major life adjusment just to avoid getting hit with 'harming and unborn child.'

Your assumption is that the woman knows and wants a child. This is quite, quite often not the case. If I were pregnant today, I wouldn't know. I had wine last week with my family. Should I be prosecuted?

For those that said a child being born with FAS would be proof of a crime - you would have to prove that the woman knew she was pregnant when she drank. Drinking during the first trimester is the most dangerous for a child. And, as noted, a woman will not immediately know she is pregnant. Thus either women don't get to drink at at all, or they shouldn't be labeled criminals for lack of knowledge.

If you misuse the term "infant" to mean "fetus", expect to be corrected. There's a reason there are two different words for the two different meanings.


I think you've missed that women who only find out they are pregnant after they've likely caused the fetus harm always have the option of terminating the pregnancy.

Not in every state of the USA, and hardly in every country in the world. This means that the economic reality for many women is that they have no legal way that they can realistically terminate.

In every state of the U.S., women have the option of terminating pregnancy to at least 20 weeks, which is long past the time when they should be aware they are pregnant.

As for other parts of the world, there are also other parts of the world where women are already prohibited from drinking or other such activities at all times. I would argue that those laws are too broad, and also that they should have abortion rights where they don't, but I think those issues go beyond the scope of this thread.

This is a better argument but even so - you'd have to catalogue every drink you took. Did I drink that wine two weeks ago or three? Even a glass or two is enough to harm. Some women would have to terminate every pregnancy just to be certain, and a lot of places will refuse to abort another pregnancy if a woman has already had one or two abortions in the past.

The obvious solution is for all reproduction to be handled at central state-run facilities. where eggs and sperm can be combined to provide optimal genetic mixes for the State's needs for new humans and spare parts.

Embryos designated as replacement citrizens will be gestated in controlled conditions until "birth", and then transferred to creches for training.

Any human female who allows an unauthorized egg to be fertilized will be apprehended, as will the sperm donor, after DNA identification. They will be sterilized, if of significant use to the State, or recycled.


Pretty common proposal in some strands of sci fi. We are about ready with the technology. That should eliminate the risk of pitterpattering feet making workers less productive.