Should drinking alcohol during pregnancy be a crime?

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Don't let's be silly- a biological parasite is not analogous to those possessing moral personhood.

$468 is a significant percentage of income for many Americans- it is two months' of groceries where I'm from-
especially those living at or below the poverty line,
and those who do not have that much money on hand at one time.
Having color TV with cable is not a sign of wealth, as of the last half-century-
it is a sign a poor person meticulously-budgeted for months or years to afford what many others buy on a whim.
Not that direct-cost (versus, say, thousands of miles) is per se the only factor in accessibility.

There are charities giving money to women who need abortions?
Link?
And here I thought you'd be the type to kick a pregnant lady off a roller coaster.

I don't.

It is only you who thinks such a scenario calls for "blame" at all.

FAS is nevertheless a societal issue when it is large-scale societal groups which fight tooth and nail to restrict abortion access
and like to pretend this will affect the behavior of addicts and drunks.




Either whine about spud-head babes, or the radical notion of abortion accessibility and affordability.

You can't do both.

Last edited by ValentineWiggin on 15 Jun 2011, 5:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

^^^^

Not spam posting or anything?

Nah- observe how my posts are on the thread topic?

I'm sorry- I thought this was a thread calling for personal opinion regarding the role of the state in a specific context.
Forgive me.
And no- I asserted it is the role of the state to provide for the basic needs of its citizens, being that's what it's supposedly there for. One of those needs is health care.

That's what's referred to as particularly-bad neocon rhetoric scripting, even by right wing noise machine "standards".
I'm sorry- I thought this was a thread calling for personal opinion regarding the role of the state in a specific context.
Forgive me.
And no- I asserted it is inconsistent for the state to criminally-penalize women for the "crime" of continuing as an adult citizen over age 21 to consume alcohol post-conception, when that same state does not provide for elective termination of pregnancy, nor even protection of the accessibility of said procedure, and birth control access is likewise limited based on socioeconomic class.

When it does not serve its citizens basic needs.

It is certainly not the role of the state to criminally-prosecute you
for basic human choices on the basis of their resulting in undesirable outcomes
if that same state normally actively-forbids you from opting out of said outcomes.
That was the question, after all...

It isn't.
The vast majority of insurance prescription plans do not cover contraception,
nor do they cover outpatient contraception devices,
and those are the lucky Americans who have insurance.
Although...once again...NO, my "argument" is not reliant on that fact,
since it deals with inconsistencies in government policies, that being the thread topic,
whereas you are obsessed with who's to "blame" when women become pregnant.

Uh-huh, while female-controlled means of birth control are considerably more-expensive, contributing directly to women of reproductive age paying more out-of-pocket for health care.

Women don't have penises. Let's not be silly, and maybe review the actual substance of my post that you're butchering, since issues of "blame" and "responsibility" played no part in it.

Any person who is not by virtue of birth or current circumstance able to do the same.

Can any one give us a reason why a person who becomes indignant at the suggestion that God tells people what they should and should not do [allegedly for their good, certainly in furtherance of his mysterious plans] would welcome the State telling people what they should and should not do [allegedly for their good, certainly in furtherance of its mysterious plans]?

Put the book down, Tony, the answer is not in there.

Class? This is really a very simple question.

Anybody?

This strikes me as getting around many of the objections in this thread. Once the child is born, there is a injured party.

Given that the State exists to serve the neds and interests of its clientele, it follows that the state has an overriding interest in the quality and number of its citizens.

Quality:

All citizens should be tested at birth, before puberty, and at ten year intervals thereafter to detect undesirable physical and mental traits. Undesirables should be sterilized. Reproduction should be monitored to increase the probability of desirable traits.

Any citizen over the age of ten who is unable to contribute meaningfully to the State and who can not produce a certificate that he will be able to contribute within twelve months will be recycled.

Quanity:

If conditions require a larger work force, Sterilized undesirables shall be permitted to live. Reproduction will be encouraged and abortion privileges cancelled.

If conditions require a reduction in the population, undesirables shall be recycled. The rate of reproduction will be slowed and the conditions for mandated abortion tightened.


----------

Nothing new about these proposals, of course. Hard to see why they have not all been implemented yet.

F*ck the State. Since when does the State count more than individuals?

The State is tyranny and slavery. Mankind would be much better off with mutual fairness and justice than it ever was with the State.

ruveyn

BurntOutMom is right.
If a baby is born with injuries due to alcohol/drug use, that's the time when a crime could be proven.

The one involves fantastical faerie stories, but you're absolutely right that Bronze Age pubescent Jewish whores aside,
not many people take kindly to becoming an incubator for Big Brother.

I wasn't trying to get around anything, that was precisely my point. The next line that you left off was "This makes sense to me, but what about the previous 9 months of abuse on the fetus' body?"



That is certainly when it could be proven, my present question to myself is 'should this be the only time that a crime is considered?'

(I'm kind of thinking out loud here... I know a lot might not agree with me, I'm really just trying to put words to what I think on the issue.)

For me, in a lot of cases, I think abortion is the lesser evil. I do view abortion as killing a potential life, and it should (again, just my opinion) be avoided if possible. I view it as a lesser evil because part of what makes us who we are is our experiences, personality, interactions, and such. I guess killing a fetus. to me, is less heinous because you aren't taking them out of this world, you're stopping them from ever reaching it. My point of this is just to explain why I think abortion is an ok option. (and often think it's the best option.)

As I stated before, if you don't obtain an abortion, and your intent is to incubate it to fruition, either to keep or give up for adoption, I think you have a certain responsibility. Past the 1st trimester deadline, you've made a commitment of intent. To be quite honest, I get a little jumpy when women intend to get an abortion and continue to party and drink and such before obtaining it. Some women have a hard time actually having the process done and change their mind at the last minute. I think it would be wisest to operate on an "Anything could happen" premise and abstain until it's final.

When it comes down to it, I don't have any right to dictate what someone else does with their body, pregnant or not. However, I don't have to like or condone it. Making laws governing such are touchy because they could be a stepping stone to taking away all of a woman's rights regarding pregnancy and abortion. Making it illegal to harm a fetus is a hiccup away from making abortion illegal. I get that, and feel that would be a bad step to take. This doesn't change the fact that I think alcohol and drug use during pregnancy is a bad thing and that I wish it could be criminalized without risking abortion rights.

I know this is an old case, but when Diane Downs was arrested, they found a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam in her car with vaginal mucous around the mouth and neck of the bottle. She was in her 6th pregnancy, being arrested for the shooting of her 3 children, in which one child was killed. I know this is a different scenario, and I'm not sure that alcohol damage was done to the resulting child, but should something like this be considered a crime if the damage is done?

What about taking alcohol out of it? My brother has Cerebral Palsy because when his mom was pregnant with him, his biological father beat her severely in the abdomen, causing damage to him as a fetus. Should the fetus be considered in abuse cases of this nature?

A better question would be:

Can any sort of criminalization of this action actually stop it from happening?

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/