Should it be okay for women to smoke while pregnant?

Post Reply New Topic

You shouldn't count the vaccine idea as an answer. It was really just idle speculation motivated by this inspired by this computer virus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet . I wouldn't promote it if it required a lot of injections or variations. I would like to see the religious right's heads explode though so if that happens, it'd be sufficient justification to do that at least for a long enough period of time to act as a cure.

The state should get involved in situations where the rights claims are weaker and cost-benefit analysis suggests an intervention would be good.

So, from my understanding, cystic fibrosis isn't common, it's not going to impact very many people, and as such a law like this is very unlikely to provide much benefit. There are a few cases that may be better off, but because it's not the most common situation, verification isn't necessarily going to be the best, we're more likely to have too many bad uses relative to good ones. So, I'd tend to come out against it.

I think on drinking you've made a good case centering on the first trimester and the difficulties of enforcement. Also, relative to the # of people who drink, the incidence of fetal alcohol syndrome is low enough that the risk may be acceptable, and that other measures are probably better to avoid problems. I'd also think that a conclusion banning young women from drinking is bad. SO TO MAKE THIS CLEAR, I ACTUALLY DO THINK THAT THE COSTS OF ENFORCEMENT ARE TOO HIGH RELATIVE TO THE BENEFITS TO BE FOR LAWS ON DRINKING DURING PREGNANCY. I've been unjust to not make this clear enough, especially since my argument is what it is. And to be direct, this is because of your argumentation, LKL.

Hmm.... unless you know more than I do, aren't the general risk levels for this low enough that no intervention is generally needed? Even if an intervention were taken, is there a much higher probability of a good outcome? Additionally, my suspicion is that variances in fetal outcomes is low enough between home and hospital births that it's not a strong case for intervention. I mean, because my position is based significantly but not entirely upon outcomes, I can't say too much if I don't know all of the medical details.

Also that last question is a really interesting one. I don't know if you remember or were paying attention, but I actually did support removing the Phelps kids from their families on the grounds that their parents were exposing them to too much risk by taking them to protest events that were very likely to break out in violence. (Even if these events SHOULD NOT be violent, past history is sufficient reason to consider it irresponsible to bring them there. It's not blaming the parents for the actions of others, it's simply being mindful of consequences and risks.) And it's a difficult line. So, if a family is raising their children in terroristic beliefs, then... I think that removal is the ideal option. In practice, we may have so many problems of false positives and difficult verification with low incidence to justify it that we may prefer not to.

The rest is more difficult, as we'd need to verify this is happening, that the situation is bad enough that state intervention is actually better than the bad parent(and it may not be because the state is a horrible parent), and then have this happen. I can't justify creationism, even though I really hate it, there's not enough social harm and too much stepping on personal beliefs and personal freedoms. Racism and similar things are stronger in many ways, but it's complicated because a real question is "How racist?". I mean, given that the KKK is a terrorist organization it would really fall under anti-terrorism. However, a load of people are casually racist and that's just how the world works, we're not better off removing them. Even if we could get a better childhood outcome by taking children to "Happytown Foster Homes", I'd still not advocate it given that too many people's freedoms would be infringed. If a rise in racism and racially motivated violence was enough to start being a concern, then I can see advocating this removal. Additionally, if we noticed factors in terms of increasing the incidence of crime by having children raised in a certain setting, then I can see advocating removing children due to potential criminality, so long as it were high enough, and the expected outcome of removal would result in better outcomes for the child. My feeling on vaccination though, is that anti-vaccination attitudes should not be honored as strongly, because they are groundless. I mean, if childhood vaccination is not justified, then don't require it, but if it is, minimize plausible exceptions to the clearest cases of rights-violations. Also, I do think that in a case like Christian Scientist family has a child that needs medical care, the state does have the right(and perhaps duty) to intervene and provide that care even if it violates the faith of the family.

I simply don't advocate rights as a strong ethical imperative. I'd simply promote a pragmatic concern for freedom. Honestly... at this point, I don't perceive freedom as actually necessarily being an outcome of rights enforcement, so much as a state of relative power. So, let's say that libertopia perfectly enforces rights, does that mean that libertopia is the freest possible society? No. Maybe the power inequities are such that people feel relatively oppressed, rights are formally upheld, but this works out in the worst possible manner(maybe everybody has now sold themselves as debt-slaves for whatever reason). I'm not expecting libertopia to be horrible, mind you, but I have to be open to the argument, and because of that, I'd think that freedom is more important than rights. And... I'd say that in many areas I probably would advocate stronger freedom than currently exists in US society, such as a more liberal drug-reform including legalized marijuana, definitely more protection for privacy from the government, definitely come out pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, definitely favor free speech, I'd say I'd advocate polygamy and polygyny as legal marital forms unless some evidence I didn't know about before came in, lower drinking age, and so on and so forth. I mean, we can go into various policies, but still... often greater freedom is actually better, especially given that societies will often auto-correct themselves quite a bit.

I find it amusing that I make your skin crawl. I find I have that reaction on people. I think I just have a relatively weak moral disgust response.

Slippery Slope. Any attempt to outlaw particular beliefs, qua beliefs will shortly backfire. Two can play the game is easily as one, the the reactionary yokels of the nation are in the majority. People have a -right- to be mistaken.

ruveyn

wrt. home vs. hospital births, here are the main rabble-rousing blogs:
http://www.skepticalob.com/
http://hurtbyhomebirth.blogspot.com/

It's actually a quite emotional topic for a lot of people, with a sometimes nearly religious pursuit of adherents on both sides of the argument.

Yeah, ideally I'd just get a quick statistical overview. This kind of helps: http://www.skepticalob.com/2012/11/15th ... -year.html

So, while 300% is high, another factor is that the original risk is low. And because both risk rates are pretty low, I see no reason to be that concerned about it. It's not a "battlefield" situation. So, I think the case for allowing both methods is reasonably strong in this case.

I'm going to point out the obvious, a child is not the property of their parents, slavery is illegal.

That means the kid in the womb is not property, just like you aren't property; all this bull**** about the woman's own body is bull****, if she chose to indulge in behavior that got her pregnent she is responsible for the kid in the womb and her choosing to drink and smoke doesn't simply affect her body, it endangers the child, whom is not her property.

Slavery is illegal folks.

10,000 years ago there were no hospitals nor physicians. The "homes" people lived in were huts, caves, animal skin tens, etc. As recently as 100 years ago in 1912 most babies were born at home. So HOW on Earth did humanity survive long enough to develop the medical technology that is used in hospital births?

I really hope you were being sarcastic with that question.

In my native country of Denmark, statistics show that 1 out of 100 non-complicated births turn out to be complicated after all. With home births, this results in significant risks to the mother and child in these cases, as the skills to deal with complicated births are rarely (if ever) present at home births, where doctors seldom participate.

Although the access requirements for midwifery training are almost equal to that of medicine in Denmark, 12 years of subsequent medical training still beats 3½ years of midwifery training (The educational length of a gynaecologist/obstetrician vis a vis a midwife in Denmark). So, my initial assessment is that smart money is on hospital births.

I wouldn't mind setting up some guidelines for home births - standards of practice, for example ('take a blood pressure occasionally,' would be a good start, and would have prevented one of the worst home-births-gone-wrong that I've seen), and standards of training for midwives. A friend of mine wants to get into midwifery, without going through nursing school, 'because the training is shorter, and she could get into practice sooner.'
Eeeeyeahh.... about that...
how do you tell someone that they're being a careless, selfish idiot and remain their friend? At the time, I just sort of stared at her, waiting for her to figure it out for herself, and then I realized that was 'one of those things that I shouldn't say out loud.'
Another woman from the dojo (another good friend) is the daughter of a famous home-birth guru here in the States. They're both evangelistic about the joys of homebirth, and I'm evangelistic about the dangers. Good people, just not very science-based in their thinking. Not what you want in a HCP, imnsho.

I'm not being sarcastic at all. Clearly enough babies survived to allow human science and technology to advance to the point of hospital building and other medical technology to bring about the advent of hospital births.

I see what you did there. You made that statement under the assumption that hospital births are the only good kind of births, and that's why you're amazed at how did people manage before them. But in truth, you should approach the issue without preconceptions, realize that humans have been giving birth for millennia and doing fine (well, hospital births must certainly make things safer, but medical knowledge can also be applied to an extent outside a hospital environment, so home births today must be safer than they used to be in the old times) and give some credit to that point of view. First check the facts and then form an opinion, instead of first having the opinion and then making the facts around it fit.

I made no such assumption, actually. But the links that LKL posted certainly elude to that.

The links LKL posted are simply very driven sources motivated to put forward that hospital births result in better outcomes. They CLEARLY do not contradict the idea that it is possible to have a home birth, they'd only argue that it is irresponsible because of the complications and that the likelihood of a bad outcome is much higher.

Always so concerned for the unborn, but never for the living. What if the unborn potential person wanted to give birth to their baby at home? The individual's right to birth her children in her own way is her own business. You, nor the state has rights over a woman's body and her best judgement for her child.

Home births could result in a 90% neonatal mortality rate, and the population would still grow as long as each woman had more than two children who survived to reproduce themselves. It would mean that each woman had to basically spend most of her life pregnant or lactating, but look! that's basically what actually happened. IIrc the actual total childhood death rate (with most of it occurring peri-natally or in infancy) was closer to 50% before modern medicine: unimaginably high by modern standards, but still not enough to keep the population from growing in an era with no birth control. In addition, a lot of women died quite young, in childbirth; they might pop out half a dozen kids, three of which survived to adulthood, and then die trying to bith another one in their mid-30s, and the population would still grow.

Go to a pioneer graveyard sometime, if there is one near you, and read the inscriptions on the tombstones. There are an awful lot of 'died in childbirth's, buried right next to 'November 24, 1893-November 25, 1893.' Homebirth advocates will say that this is because 'doctors didn't wash their hands,' but a lot of these deaths occurred in areas where there were no doctors.

Having a home birth is like driving without a seatbelt while your baby lies unsecured on the passenger seat. Maybe you won't have an accident, but it's a crazy, pointless risk nonetheless.