What would you say about a mother who forced her children to smoke cigarettes? How about a mother who insisted her children drink alcohol? And I'm not talking about just making it available to them, but actually forcing the child to ingest tobacco and alcohol at the same amounts the mother does. Would this mother be accused of child abuse? Endangering the life of a minor? And just what is the punishment for that kind of behavior? If the news reported that a mother was arrested for forcing her children to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes, the nation would be outraged, especially if the children were infants, unable to defend themselves. The child would be put into protective custody immediately, and the mother would be arrested. There would be a high profile trial for recklessly endangering the life of a minor, child abuse, and more. But as bad as it sounds involving a young child, if the government gave rights to fetuses it would have huge repercussions on our entire legal and penal system, not to mention on the 6 million women a year who get pregnant. It's something both sides should take a serious look at.
On average, in 2003 roughly 11 percent of all pregnant women in the US smoked during their pregnancy and in some states, the numbers soared to over 26 percent (way to go West Virginia!). Breaking down the figures, we see large differences in ethnic, economic and educational statistics. For instance, over 40 percent of white women without a high school diploma smoked during pregnancy and American Indian women were the most likely to smoke during pregnancy. Overall, four times as many women without a high school diploma smoke during pregnancy. Smoking during pregnancy has been linked to 10 percent of all infant deaths and may impair normal fetal brain and nervous system development. Children of parents who smoke are more vulnerable to respiratory problems, such as asthma and wheezing, middle ear infections and impaired lung function. And nicotine is found in breast milk, in case breathing it in isn't bad enough. But this goes beyond issues of secondhand smoke in homes and cars around children. Though both are reprehensible and abusive, there is a difference between a home or car and a womb with a shared bloodstream. A fetus can't roll the window down for a breath of fresh air, and an umbilical cord is about as intravenous as you can get. By fighting for the rights of the unborn, pro-lifers ultimately put the rights and responsibilities of mothers at stake. When you are carrying a human being with full rights inside of you, your own rights are certainly curtailed. Today roughly 12% of pregnant women smoke nationwide, with states such as West Virginia and Kentucky setting the curve with over 20 percent of their pregnant women smoking. Maternal smoking during pregnancy increases the risk of pregnancy complications, premature delivery, low-birth-weight infants, stillbirth, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Additionally, there is a direct correlation between the amount of smoking during pregnancy and the frequency of spontaneous abortion and fetal death. And then there is alcohol.
US Dept of Health & Human Services states that roughly 13 percent of pregnant women drink alcohol, and 25 percent of those are "binge drinkers." Heavy alcohol consumption by a pregnant woman can result in her child being born with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), the leading known environmental cause of mental retardation in the Western World. Exposed to alcohol, the fetus develops intoxication syndrome, causing both physical and mental defects: small head, mental retardation, slow improvement, excessive activity (which raises the question: did Barbara Bush drink while pregnant?). Three ounces a day (sometimes even a singular consumption) is enough to affect the fetus harmfully. The National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect states that 50 to 80 percent of all child abuse and neglect cases substantiated by child protective services involve some degree of alcohol use or abuse. But that number doesn't include prenatal abuse and neglect, nor does it account for the children actually ingesting the substances as they do in the womb. Certainly there is overlap between mothers who smoke cigarettes and mothers who drink, but it's safe to say that the total number of pregnant mothers who smoke and/or drink is well over a half a million yearly. This brings me to the ultimate post-Roe scenario: law enforcement and litigation.
Is there any question a mother who forces her child to smoke or drink (let alone use illegal drugs) should be punished? If unborn children have similar rights as those outside of the womb, shouldn't punishment be the same? And what is the punishment for forcing your children to ingest harmful (albeit legally available) drugs? According to MADD, alcohol use is America's No. 1 youth drug problem, killing 6.5 times more young people than all other illicit drugs combined. Alcohol and tobacco together kill more than 50 times the number of people killed by cocaine, heroin and every other drug combined. But those staggering numbers reflect those kids who used substances by choice. What choice does an unborn fetus have when its host parent is ingesting? Would a child who was forced to ingest alcohol or tobacco and lived be able to sue his mother for medical problems later in life? If a mother's use of alcohol and/or tobacco caused spontaneous abortion or fetal death, would she be charged with murder? Does the same go for transmitting HIV to a child? And how would these laws be enforced? Police arresting pregnant mothers? Prisons equipped with maternity wards? Courthouses swamped and a huge new income stream for lawyers? Landmark legal cases involving defense attorneys representing fetuses still inside the womb of the person they are prosecuting? The possibilities are unprecedented in our legal system and society, and deserve serious consideration. Even with today's laws, we have seen examples on a State level. Take Regina McKnight, currently serving a 12-year sentence in a South Carolina prison for using crack cocaine during pregnancy before delivering a stillborn baby. Though crack is illegal and cigarettes & alcohol are not, it's still a precedent for unborn child abuse. Now imagine half a million more inmates just like her in our nations already overcrowded prisons EVERY YEAR. Or an entire prison wing dedicated to third trimester pregnancies. Though you might have to wait until the baby is born to incarcerate it's mother because if you incarcerated her while pregnant, then under the circumstances you're incarcerating the innocent victim too. And where there is an 'innocent victim' there is a lawyer ready to represent him/her/it in a court of law.
It's safe to say that when it comes to children already born, recklessly endangering their life would cause serious repercussions to the parent responsible. In most cases, the child would be taken away from the parent because their lives are in mortal danger. But what happens when the child is unborn? There is only one way to remove an unborn child from its mother, and it's the same procedure that would be outlawed by giving the child its rights in the first place. And it is this Catch 22 that both sides of the abortion movement need to consider before further arguing over Roe vs. Wade.