In America, women are being arrested and put into jail for taking drugs during their pregnancies and woe betide any woman who has a glass of wine or a cigarette. The whole of American society appears to be prepared to act punitively against any woman who is perceived as putting her baby's life at risk.
No attempt has been made, however, to put into jail the delivery room drug pushers. A woman can spend the whole of her pregnancy not smoking, drinking or taking even so much as an aspirin because she is concerned about the welfare of her baby. If, however, she chooses to give birth in a large, centralised obstetric unit she may well find that she, over a period of a few hours to a couple of days, will have taken more hard drugs than she would have ever been exposed to during the whole of her pregnancy, or indeed her life.
Because these drugs are prescribed by the medical profession, women's desire to protect the health of their baby goes out the window and they happily submit to whatever cocktail the doctors choose to prescribe. And nobody is even slightly concerned about the long term effects. Indeed attempts to discuss the potential side effects are often dismissed or even shouted down by enthusiasts. And heaven forbid we should make women worry.
-Beverley Beech, AIMS Journal Spring 1998
Reprinted from Midwifery Today E-News (Vol 1 Issue 20, May 14, 1999)
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