Should Women Who Deliver Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) Children Be Sterilized?
06 Feb 2010
Destroying yourself with alcohol is one thing. Destroying an innocent fetus by excessive use of alcohol is maternal madness. Yet every year alcohol-riddled babies are born in this country suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS).
FAS is the leading cause of mental retardation and birth defects in North America. In 1976 the Journal of the American Medical Association reported a study of 41 infants born with FAS, having both physical and mental defects. Since that time studies show that nine in every 1,000 babies born in this country have some form of FAS. One in three will have the severe form with wide-set eyes, thin upper lips, low birth weight and small head circumference.
We now know that FAS occurs in about one-third to one half of infants whose mothers consume six or more alcoholic drinks a day during pregnancy. A report from Harvard claims the risk drops to 10 percent with three drinks a day. And that five ounces of absolute alcohol a day, or binge drinking, can cause this medical and social disaster.
Many pregnant women don’t realize that when they consume alcohol the fetus also consumes it. Moreover, there’s a huge difference between alcohol in the mother’s body and that of the fetus.
Pregnant women have a well functioning mature liver that helps to detoxify alcohol in the blood. A developing fetus does not have this metabolic safeguard. This means that when alcohol crosses the placental barrier the fetus is poorly equipped to handle it and is subjected to higher concentration of alcohol for a longer period of time. This spells disaster for the developing brain.
Kent Roach, law professor at the University of Toronto, recently reported that brain damaged children are more likely to end up in court. He also believes that these children are more likely to be unfairly treated in the criminal justice system. And he questions whether judges should consider FAS children unfit for trial.
I am not a lawyer and have no way of knowing how unfairly FAS children are treated in a court of law. But I do know that once some pregnant women start consuming a bottle of whiskey every day their babies enter this world with more than three strikes against them. And unlike some medical problems, there is no way to heal their damaged, ill-formed brains.
So a drunken mother passes along not only more court appearances, but a host of mental and physical problems that last a lifetime. One does not need much imagination to speculate on what this tragedy costs the child and society.
According to the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse this country spends four billion annually on FAS children. Just in the province of Alberta there are 8,000 children with FAS being cared for by social services with the lifetime cost for each child over one million dollars. The 10th Special Report to the U.S. Congress estimated that the annual cost to care for FAS children was in the billions. And each year in the U.S another 40,000 children are born with this disease.
What is equally appalling is that obstetrical contacts tell me that some women bring not one but several FAS children, into this world. Why this is allowed to happen boggles my mind, and I hope yours.
Kent Roach is no doubt right that these children receive questionable justice in a court of law. I would add that FAS children receive no justice while in the womb. No law can incarcerate pregnant women to prevent their daily binges. Nor is there any law that will stop them from having additional FAS children.
To me good sense dictates that women who repeatedly drink to excess during pregnancy should be sterilized to end this medical and social tragedy. I’ve read tons of reports from organizations associated with this problem. Not a single one has suggested legislation to sterilize repeat offenders.
Some may argue that individual rights prevents sterilizing these women. But surely there must be legislators who believe that an innocent fetus has more rights that a drunk-sodden mother and enact legislation to end this tragedy.
What do you think? I’d be interested to receive your opinion. My e-mail gifford-jones @ hotmail.com
