NEWS: Pregnant Canaries in the Bar at the Coal Mine

CULTURE: Pregnant Canaries in the Bar at the Coal Mine

You really have to love the Brits.

Here's a guy who gets it: pregnant women matter because chipping away at their rights seems so reasonable to people. After all, they're pregnant; they need protection. But when we, the not-pregnant, assert our rights over pregnant women, we imply not only that they can't think for themselves, but that their rights as adults are limitable. It's not that far from asserting that pregnant women shouldn't drink or do drugs to throwing drunk or high mothers in jail to declaring all women "pre-pregnant". Of course, so far it's only women whose rights we're talking about limiting--but what happens when we start worrying about men's infertility or their "bad lifestyles"?

Pay attention, boys:

If you don't care about women's rights because women are human beings, you oughta care about them because you're not immune from having your rights taken away, either--even if your male privilege makes you think you are.

Bitch_PhD had a bonding moment with a mom in her kid's class the other day who confessed that she drank when she was pregnant too. Bitch's kid has a crush on the other mom's kid--which is only right, since they're the smartest boy and girl in the class.

Wow. I wish the government cared that much about how fit I was to knock someone up. I'd be honored. I guess I would get annoyed if I was in the slammer for wearing tight undies though.

On a personal level (in no way representing my attitude towards legislation), if you don't have the willpower and/or psychological fortitude to refrain from consciously subjecting your unborn child to terratogens (drugs, alcohol, tobacco, etc.), then you have absolutely no fucking business having a child since you obviously don't place a high regard on their welfare.

I don't care if it's a .001% chance that it will harm the child. Why in the hell would you consider that an acceptable risk if you're going to claim later on that this is the person that you "love more than life itself." Bullshit. Most people love their children to the extent that it doesn't interfere with their lifestyle to an unacceptable level.

And fucking comparing restrictions on the behavior of pregnant women that can potentially cause permanent harm to their child is completely different from a man or woman doing something that harms his or her fertility. To make that comparison is just asinine.

I certainly don't like the idea of the government telling us all how to live our individual lives (I support drug legalization, gun rights, protection of private property, etc.). However, as a country we have to come together at some point and decide what does and does not constitute a child. Particularly if the anti-abortion crowd has its way, and a fetus is officially declared to be a human child, then you're opening the door for any drinking, smoking, or drug using mother to be charged with endangering a child.

Even if we maintain the more moderate position of a fetus not being considered a separate life form, why is it that women and men are strictly barred from doing any harm to their children once they're born, but while they're still in the womb you can pump them full of whatever harmful chemicals you want to?

If our country goes further down the tubes and we end up with more government involvement in health care, what do you think that will mean? If the government (read: stolen tax dollars) is footing the bill for all the medical expenses of kids with birth defects, do you think they're going to sit idly by and let it happen? Hell no. Look at every country with a socialized or "universal" health care system, and government bureaucracy is present in a wide array of medical decisions, in many cases down to who gets what drug or treatment and whether or not someone is "worth saving."

While the issue of laws governing the actions of pregnant women is certainly one in need of further debate, to label it as a "women's rights issue" is to grossly oversimplify the nature of the situation, and arguably to completely devalue the entire act of motherhood.

When one chooses to become a parent you cease to live solely for yourself. Even if you don't believe in any moral component there, our laws and legal traditions support the idea that you automatically have obligations to your offspring whether you want them or not.

The idea that women have some sort of innate "right" to engage in self-destructive behaviors is ridiculous when it is inarguable that these behaviors are putting another life in danger. That is the essence of our legal system, at least that's the intention. You have as much freedom as is possible without your freedoms infringing on those of others. Can I drink myself into a stupor? Yes. Can I drink myself into a stupor and then drive a car? No, because I'm putting others in danger.

If you don't care about the well-being of your unborn child, then you obviously don't want to be a mom, so get an abortion. Otherwise, grow up, get sober, eat right, and stay healthy. If you're not willing to do all of that then you have no remote idea what it means to be a parent.

For what it's worth, I grew up around multiple children with birth defects specifically related to substance abuse. My current girlfriend was the child of an alcoholic mother who drank heavily throughout her pregnancy ( a planned pregancy), but also drank and smoked through both of her previous pregnancies, although on a more "normal" level. My girlfriend is cursed with never knowing the full extent of the damage that was done to her, is constantly having to question her memory and other mental faculties, and is actively terrified of getting older as she is statistically very likely to have more severe aging symptoms, specifically in regards to senility, than someone born of a healthy pregnancy.

To argue that pregnancy is a right devalues children in a way that I cannot possibly describe.

edited so as not to get zotted

Tease.

Perhaps I'm odd, but I didn't consider abstaining from alcohol for a whopping nine months of my life that difficult. Anything to up the odds of my child being healthy.

Odd.

this isn't a new law banning women from drinking whilst pregnant it's only advice saying you really shouldn't do it, but if you want to then we've at least informed you it might be dangerous.

If it was a new law then that would be a different matter

Hey, Bitch_PhD, have you ever noticed how what seems like common-sense advice to the well-educated amongst us, but is intended for the less-well-educated amongst us, comes off as patronizing towards the well-educated group?

Have you ever noticed how those who've never been educated on certain subjects comes as a revelation to those who have never had the opportunity to be educated on such things?

Did you ever think that perhaps you and your child are perhaps the exception and not the rule?

Weird world, eh?

Really, though, I just have a minor in Womens Studies, a few stints in volunteer work in womens' shelters in rural areas of the US and a few months working with social services in Missouri (where, believe it or not, there were pregnant women who couldn't wait to have their babies and who had no ideas about basic nutrition, let alone knowledge of the fact that things like smoking a pack of Marlboro Reds a day and drinking a 6-pack of Budweiser a day could potentially harm their unborn child's health), and just about 30 years living as a woman, though. It certainly doesn't compare to a PhD in Bitchery. I wish they'd offered that when I was in college.

Don't get me wrong, I'm militantly pro-choice. I'm also pro-education. I don't find telling pregnant women that their personal choices affect their unborn children offensive or belittling.

While I didn't read it all...I'd have to say ditto from what I did

Edited cause the original post was long enough the first time :-p

Erm, the advice given was switched from advising pregnant women to only drink lightly (if not at all), to not at all (but failing that lightly). How is that infringing on womens rights? Also, it's only advice, not law, so again, it's hardly eroding womens rights. I agree that the medical studies done are few and far between for the effects of small amounts of alcohol on the unborn child, but in case you haven't noticed, we've got a bit of a drink problem over here and our "small" is somewhat different to the governments idea of small.

I agree with Shalome.

Also, that Times article you linked wasn't talking about advising men about their fertility. It was talking about the new policy of alcohol companies in Britain labelling their bottles with advice telling their consumers the number of units of alcohol that is considered approximately 'safe' to drink.

In Britain, there's a serious problem with binge drinking, and there are alot of people with genuinely no clue on how many units of alcohol are safe to drink. Granted, there are people who already know that they're going overboard with the alcohol and don't care, but I know alot of people who simply don't realise that they're drinking to excess, because alcohol consumption is such an integral part of social interaction over here. Anything that might help bring some people back down to earth seems like a good idea to me.

Even if it just stops one person dying of liver cirrhosis, I think the initiative is worth it.

Next time you read a health and safety warning and think 'don't these people know I have a pHd? How dare they bore me with their inane advice?'', take a moment to realise that there are alot of people outside of your social circle that are unaware of the seemingly 'obvious' dangers of toxic substances. Warning labels on products are a decent (though not entirely effective) way of reaching these people.

I'm really unimpressed with Mick Hume's article. The Times normally have decent standards of journalism, but that article used such emotive language designed to rile the audience up, it was repulsive. Phrases like 'the government wants to teach alcohol-drinkers a lesson!', has threatening overtones that are not appropriate for a tiny warning label on a bottle of scotch. God, that guy is a total tosser.

This might be bold of me to say, but I've always felt that if your drinking, doing drugs, etc. has affected your babies health in a negative way, then you should face child abuse charges.

I think that babies need protecting. I wouldn't give a newborn baby alcohol, so I wouldn't give an unborn baby alcohol either. A baby can't stand up and say "Yeah, I've thought about this and it's okay" or "no, my liver, my liver!"

Sadly there will always be some people who genuinely don't care about their own children and we need to protect those children, because they can't protect themselves.

I think expecting all women to act as if they are planning to have a baby a bit extreme.

Duh! But if you know you are, or are planning to become pregnant it makes sense not to do things that might hurt your baby. It is right to give people the information they need to make that decision.

What about if passive smoking had caused the health issues and the parent didn't smoke? Who would be charged then, the parent or the smokers who were smoking. The somkers caused the problem, but the parent put the baby on danger.

I'm not saying it's wrong I just think it's quite unenforcable due to the different levels and situations that could apply.

Fuck my baby, my need for a drink is more important, I had a hard day!

As a pro-choice person, I don't agree with this. I think people who ingest toxic substances while pregnant with a baby they're planning to carry to term are (at best) foolish and (at worst) selfish, but because the fetus is an undeveloped part of the host's body, this muddies the waters and makes abuse charges not only unfeasible but a morally wrong area for the state to legislate in.

But I think this is a seperate issue to what The Times article was claiming - that putting a small label on a bottle of Jagermeister constitutes some sort of horror that the average binge drinker shouldn't be forced to contend with.

The only argument for allowing alcohol to be sold is that people are informed adults that can make their own decisions. Which is fine. But if you stop informing people of the danger of these products, in my view that argument falls down. Which is why health and safety warnings are neccessary to allow the poison industry to operate in a (semi)ethical way.

Out of curiousity, what do people think the downsides of warning labels are? That they'll interfere with Grey Goose's super-neat motif? I've heard alot of scaremongering and rhetoric from people like Mick Hume, but I haven't heard any actual coherent thoughts on the horrors they think will result from a sticker saying 'more than 4 units of alcohol a day could be harmful to your health' on bottles of vodka.

I think that the "drink responsibly" label on every bottle of alcohol is more than sufficient. If anything , they should legislate a better alcohol/sex education program into their schools. To fucking hell with teaching abstinence- that's not the real world, teach it like it is, along the lines of "you drink too much alcohol, you get drunk", and explain in excrutiating detail what goes on while/post drunkeness. "you sleep around all the time and don't use condoms, this is what happens" and show pictures of people with syphillis and the like. They need to stop pussyfooting around the issues in schools and start teaching people how to think (effectivley) for their fucking selves.

We don't currently have any labels like this in Britain, where this 'Know Your Limits' label is being introduced.

I would suggest you read The Times article to find out more about the scheme, but I really don't want to encourage people to endure that sickening piece of sensationalist journalism. Here's a good article to read instead:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6692593.stm

Oh, BBC how I love thee.

Where's the meth?

to be fair though if you've got as far as the Jagermeister you're probably beyond coherent thought and reading, so the labels would be a waste of time

most if not all bottles/cans have the
Drink Aware URL and how many untis they contain however

Drink Aware is a great site, but only about half of the bottles of alcohol I came across when working as a bartender in Britain had those labels on. They seem to mainly just put them on 'high risk' alcohols that are more likely to be consumed by binge drinkers, like Jack Daniels and Malibu.

Also, I would question the effectiveness of the label scheme, as alot of alcohol is served in unmarked wine/pint/shot glasses in bars that (obviously) don't have a warning on them.

But, it most certainly is not is a bad or harmful thing as that article tries desperately to claim.

This could be an interesting argument, akin to Jennifer Terry's older work on reproduction and surveillance of women. Or you could have made use of Foucault or, to stretch a little more, Agamben to analyze this brand of bio-politics and exclusion. Or you could have done a little to talk about how rhetoric of child protection has been used to advance conservative politics and police behavior of "deviant" groups.

But BitchPhD, you took the easy path of repeating a terrible citation of the over-iterated Holocaust quote and then taunting "boys" with their male privilege. And the slippery slope argument not only has holes in it, but it misses the point that even if boys weren't in danger, shouldn't they (we) still care?

I thought things were getting better. I'm afraid this post will generate much heat, but little light and do that terrible entrenching of culture war bullshit. And I hate that.