Should drinking alcohol during pregnancy be a crime?

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While consuming alcohol while pregnant is not advisable, how can it be a crime? The fetus is not a person and has no rights so harm to the fetus is not a criminal act.

ruveyn

My wife has only one working lung due to her mother smoking during her pregnancy. Is her mother responsible for that? Yes.

Even if such a law was passed, how could you enforce it?

How would anyone know if a woman was or was not pregnant while consuming alcohol?

Would you require every woman to do an on-the-spot pregnancy test before she could go into a liquor store or a bar?

Would monthly pregnancy tests become mandatory for all women every month?

Would someone be keeping track of every drink that every woman took, in order to be able to prove that she had had a drink after she in fact gave birth?

Would you just refuse any alcohol to all women with possibly big bellies?

Would you only punish women who were obviously drunk while actually in labour and delivery?

Would you punish women retroactively who had babies diagnosed with FAS?

Enforcing such laws just boggles my mind.

As you make out, it's unworkable. Any effort to try and enforce it would just lead to a lot of nastiness and discrimination and give nasty people another excuse to pick on someone considered 'beneath' them.

The state does not own my body whether I'm pregnant or not.
Car accidents are one of the most frequent causes of death of pregnant women (and their fetuses); should women be forbidden from riding in cars while pregnant?
Homicide by male partners is another frequent cause of death to pregnant women (and their fetuses); maybe women should just be held in protective custody while they're pregnant, so they can be protected and fed a diet that will benefit the fetus. This way they could also be kept from gaining too much weight, which has been shown to increase the risk of diabetes and other problems in the future child.
Should a woman who does not pre-consent to deliver by c-section, when none is indicated, have her child taken away?
http://advocatesforpregnantwomen.org/bl ... tory_o.php

And what if they want to home-school their children after they're born - should the state take the kids away for their own protection? What if they want to teach their kids ideologies that the majority find repugnant?

What if a woman chooses not to breast-feed her child - should the state take measures to force her to do so, given the known, significant benefits of breast-feeding for the infant?

Women do not cease to be citizens when they get pregnant. I don't know why that is so f*****g difficult for so many people (usually men, coincidentally) to understand.

Ace, I was responding to the OP, not to you directly.

Oh ok I just thought you were addressing me since you mentioned car accidents. I agree with the idea that the Government getting overprotective at the cost of autonomy is ridiculous.

I'm apparently not being too clear today. Chalk it up to having a cold, I guess.

This is one of those personal grey areas that is hard for me to define.

I believe in a woman's right to choose.. I believe that no one should have to carry to term if they absolutely do not want to...

However, I think that if it is your intention to incubate a fetus for the duration and the raise your parasite up to be a little human, then you should really not go f*****g up it's physiology. If you give birth to a child and it is found to have a blood alcohol level or drugs in it's system, then DHS takes the baby home and you go home to jail. This makes sense to me, but what about the previous 9 months of abuse on the fetus' body?

I know that to some my thoughts on this are contradictory. I admit that. I think the difference is intent. If you, the woman, INTEND for the fetus to be born, then you should have certain responsibilities to it.

I am fully aware that making laws to this affect would be difficult, as would enforcing it. Crack babies just make me sad. Fetal alcohol syndrome, makes me sad. BUT.. look at GW Bush... he's proof a FAS baby can grow up to be anything, right? LOL