Should heavy drinking in pregnancy be a crime? A recent test case in the UK was thrown out, but in the US hundreds of women have been imprisoned. We meet women and children affected by foetal alcohol syndrome
Stella was 19 when she discovered she has foetal alcohol syndrome. “I found out in a horrible way, to be honest,” she says. She had taken her boyfriend to meet her father for the first time. Stella and her father had only limited contact, but her boyfriend hoped that he might help to explain some of Stella’s erratic, unreliable behaviour, and asked him upfront, “What’s wrong with your daughter? Why is she the way she is?”
“That’s when he paused, and he breathed, and he said it,” Stella says, still distressed at the memory of the conversation. “I was shocked. I asked, ‘Why wasn’t I told about it?’ He said he didn’t want me to dwell on something like that.
Women shouldn’t be prosecuted – they should be given alcohol rehabilitation
No woman I have met ever wants to harm her baby. This is an illness, not a choice
There is a witch-hunt to go after the mothers, but I am living with my guilt every day. That’s a real life sentence
I didn’t know the kids' mother was an alcoholic. She loved them, but couldn’t cope. It didn’t put me off adopting them
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from Pregnancy | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1DxMQAV
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