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NSW Government to seize babies of mothers who use drugs

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http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/700027-Aus-Government-to-seize-babies-of-mothers-who-use-drugs

opi8 Today 15:17

The New South Wales Government is preparing to introduce laws that would allow babies to be seized at birth if their mothers abuse drugs during pregnancy.

Pregnant women who use drugs or alcohol will be made to sign Parental Responsibility Contracts ordering them to undergo treatment, or risk losing their child.

The contracts are already in use but currently can only be applied after a child has been born.

The Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward says hundreds of heroin-addicted babies are born every year, with terrible consequences.

"So Parental Responsibility Contracts... extending those to before the birth means we have the opportunity to require a mum to go to a drug or alcohol abstinence program (to) manage her addiction to ensure that the baby has a much better chance of being born normal and she has a much better chance of keeping her baby," she said.

The Government has been repeatedly accused of inadequately resourcing case workers, but Ms Goward doesn't believe the changes will add the workload.

"This way we have a greater opportunity of intervening earlier.

"We have drug and alcohol services that are available that are provided to the mothers and in the long run this is a much more effective way of managing the baby and the resource allocation need not be so intense,"she said.

But the New South Wales Opposition is giving no guarantees that it will support the legislation.

Opposition spokeswoman Linda Burney says drug abuse by pregnant women is a serious issue but she is concerned about the details of the legislation, including other matters such as adoption.

"The timeframes about moving to adoption are very short.

"There is less emphasis on getting consent from parents for adoption and there is (a) possibility, as I understand it, that adoption will move from the Supreme Court.

"Those things do concern me and Labor will be looking at it very carefully," she said.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-1...08?section=nsw

__________________________________________________________________

A whole new generation of stolen children? What if the birth mother likes poppyseed rolls? What about cannabis or tobacco use?

Edited by CLICKHEREx

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They took a baby from a junkie mother who was living near me about year ago. She was one of those ho's who sold her twat on the highway to get money for her next fix. Her older kids never left the house and I'm sure they didn't get fed or cared for properly.

I heard that she was given the option to get clean or lose the baby, she chose the smack.

For the most part I'm against governments splitting families up, but under those circumstances it was the right thing to do.

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anybody who can support these proposed laws are in my opinion far more dangerous to the children and community in general than the most fucked up of "pregnant drug abusers" (what ever the fuck that means) and not that there's anything defensible about abusing children but to even suggest this kind of shit!...what kind of low life trash?...honestly.

I know a young couple who had their new borne taken from them because the mother tested positive to cannabis at the hospital.

It happens regularly in the Illawarra. I guess nobody put up a fight so they are really trying to drop the hammer, hence these proposed new laws.

Edited by Sonny Jim
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Great when it works and they actually get children out of really bad situations that are detrimental to the child but there are too many alleged and proven horror stories around the world of demented case workers abusing their power and taking good kids away from good families based on flimsy hearsay evidence and mixups etc. Many often ending up in the care of pedophiles etc. I read a book some time ago called "Sarah's last wish" (Australian case) which is quite a sad and tragic horror story on the subject of demented case workers and hospital staff and the system that backed them all up while treating the family like dirt.

The spirit of eugenics is alive and well in Australia i.m.o. in more ways than one.

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This is the kind of fucked up idiotic plan that you get when drug dependence is treated as a legal problem when it should be treated as a health issue.

I can see a flood of compensation claims over this against the state in about 30 years.

Perhaps that is the point? Keep the lawyers in work? Or am i being overly cynical again?

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That's disgusting. I nearly vomited when I read that. I find it even more repulsive and hypocritical that alcohol is included in the legislation... the legal drug the government condones. A sip of wine with your dinner and we'll steal your baby...

NSW: The Dingo Government

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That's disgusting. I nearly vomited when I read that. I find it even more repulsive and hypocritical that alcohol is included in the legislation... the legal drug the government condones. A sip of wine with your dinner and we'll steal your baby...

NSW: The Dingo Government

Wouldn't it be more hypocritical if it wasn't included? I do worry about how things like this can be misused, but I don't see anything wrong with it in principle. We take children away from their parents when they are being caused harm by their actions. How is this any different? Use of many drugs during pregnancy cause irreparable damage to the child. It's not much different to the psychological damage caused by sexual abuse or physical damage caused by shaking a baby. Either it's okay to take children away from their parents when they are being abused, or it's not. And under this particular legislation, the mothers are given the opportunity to keep their baby if they undergo treatment, an offer that's not always available to perpetrators of other forms of child abuse.

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For extreme cases, sure - take the kid into custody, if it can be absolutely, positively and without doubt be shown that the mother or family cannot take care of themselves or the child - but as with every law that gets passed, it gets wider, and wider and wider until babies will be ripped out of their mothers arms for petty cases. Bookmark this link and come back in a few years...

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Wouldn't it be more hypocritical if it wasn't included? I do worry about how things like this can be misused, but I don't see anything wrong with it in principle. We take children away from their parents when they are being caused harm by their actions. How is this any different? Use of many drugs during pregnancy cause irreparable damage to the child. It's not much different to the psychological damage caused by sexual abuse or physical damage caused by shaking a baby. Either it's okay to take children away from their parents when they are being abused, or it's not. And under this particular legislation, the mothers are given the opportunity to keep their baby if they undergo treatment, an offer that's not always available to perpetrators of other forms of child abuse.

I think it depends on the criteria for the law breaking and the wording in the legislation (is it vague and hazy and left to interpretation by law enforcement, the judicial system et al; as I feel so many laws these days are). If that is the case there will never be fair justice dealt out as it will depend on the moods and the psyche of the determining officials and how the "defendant" is perceived in the eyes of the law. Do they look "Un Australian?" Do they engage in activities that can be labelled "anti authoritarian?" Does the hubby have a similar beard as seen in propaganda photos of Osama Bin Laden? Shame our parents and grand parents weren't protesting their asses off in the early days when common law education was being struck from the education curriculum. It will be the grand children of todays kids who I feel will really begin to feel the full force of that travesty in years to come. At the moment we are like little frogs in a pot set at sauna temperature - a little warm and steamy but not to bad.. I can't say if such things are being conspired or not or if it is just a case of people following those who came before down a slippery slope simply because they aren't aware that there is or was a better way and were just never told about it and they don't want to risk losing their jobs etc etc....

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I agree with ballzac on this one.

While everyone is raising absolutely valid points, in principle I think it does make sense. It's a classic case of Mills's harm principle, on which many drug legalization/harm minimization strategies are also based.

It posits that the only time a society is justified in exercising power over an individual against their will is to prevent harm to others. And I agree with that.

And I think that while you're all right in saying that the system we have set up for it is probably horrible, and that we should indeed be looking at this as a health issue first and a legal issue second - the basic principle seems sound to me, provided that it can be properly executed. But I think trying to fix the problems with the system and keeping it transparent and accountable is a much better solution than just leaving kids in shitty and/or abusive situations and saying they're probably better off.

But it does really depend on how bad their situation already is, and whether that warrants the risk of abuse in the system that will probably always be there however large or small - again, it comes down to harm minimization and what's going to be best for the kid/how bad the situation they're already in is.

Edited by gtarman
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this is bad because "drug abuse" could mean anything.

we already have laws to protect and remove children from harm.

this is not about protecting children and it worries me that is lost on some people. as a parent it really worries me. thank god my kid is in her teens now and not at risk from these horrible people who are sure they know what's best for me and my kid.

"if only those pesky rights-in-law weren't so restrictive of our attempts to help the poor stupid masses"....they seem to think :(

Edited by Sonny Jim
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Use of many drugs during pregnancy cause irreparable damage to the child...

Yes, but what do you want to bet that this will be applied in situations where the drug in question has no evidence of causing such problems... it will turn into just any illegal drug... because obviously any responsible mother wouldn't be taking acid or smoking pot while pregnant, she should only be taking nice safe stuff like SSRIs. :rolleyes:

Also, it is a completely fucking illogical plan.

The New South Wales Government is preparing to introduce laws that would allow babies to be seized at birth if their mothers abuse drugs during pregnancy.

Pregnant women who use drugs or alcohol will be made to sign Parental Responsibility Contracts ordering them to undergo treatment, or risk losing their child.

The contracts are already in use but currently can only be applied after a child has been born.

The Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward says hundreds of heroin-addicted babies are born every year, with terrible consequences.

So let me get this straight... to stop the potential harm to the foetus caused by pregnant women taking drugs, they plan to take the babies away if mum doesn't stop getting high. WHAT? The damage (assuming there is any) is already done at that point. Do these people understand how time works? Cause and effect? All of that? No?

If they truly believed that a foetus was being harmed by mum's behaviour while pregnant, then wouldn't enforced abortions be a more logical reaction?

This bullshit will serve nobody except the puritans.

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I've been thinking about this some more... because it really pissed me off... and it seems to be based on the disturbing idea that a mother who behaves in some way which might possibly damage her foetus (and the medical aspects of this are nowhere near as clear-cut as people think), is committing an offence equivalent to child abuse. Which if you think about it, is not good news for the pro-choice movement.

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I've been thinking about this some more... because it really pissed me off... and it seems to be based on the disturbing idea that a mother who behaves in some way which might possibly damage her foetus (and the medical aspects of this are nowhere near as clear-cut as people think), is committing an offence equivalent to child abuse. Which if you think about it, is not good news for the pro-choice movement.

It's not really relevant to the pro-choice movement, because the pro-choice/pro-life debate is all about whether the foetus is a person or not and whether they should be afforded the protections offered to a person or not. If damaged foetuses were miraculously cured at birth, then you would be right, because the appropriateness of this kind of law would then hinge on whether damage caused to a foetus, in and of itself, was equivalent to child abuse. But that is not the case here. If your behaviour during pregnancy causes damage to the foetus, this causes lifelong medical and developmental problems for the child, who both the pro-life and the pro-choice proponents would agree is a person.

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The mother of any unborn human should respect the duty that she has while she is pregnant. No grog, No Drugs, No Smokes, No Bungi Jumping.... Whats so hard about that?

If your in charge of the development of another little human and you think that you can just do "whateva" then you are fucking wrong!

Selfish, Disrespectful & Malicious in my opinion.

I hope this hits a few members on the chin, because you probably need the reality check!

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Nah, get back on your bike, go spout that shit somewhere else. You ain't tarring everyone with that fucking brush.

I can agree on the above in relation to extreme cases, but guess what? Not everyone's that way inclined. The occasional drink, smoke or puff ain't going to kill your unborn child.

I know a lot of people that partook at times who've had kids, and not one of those kids has issues.

So, please... Fuck off with your 'all encompassing', thine art holier than thou bullshit.

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Actually drinking and smoking will harm your unborn child. You might think that it doesn't but why would you put an unborn child at a disadvantage? If you think its okay to have the "occasional" then you are a fuckwit... plain and simple.

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It's a rule here that you need to discuss things in a civil manner. Next person to even imply an insult directed at another member will earn a warn point. hat>

Gilligan, what's wrong with playing it safe for 9 months? I mean, the data is far from conclusive, but the more data comes in, the more it seems like playing it safe is the way to go. For example, the recommendation for alcohol used to be that you could have one or two standard drinks a week, but as more data has come in, they have discovered that there really does not appear to be a safe level of alcohol that will do no damage. I'm not sure on the current status of cannabis, but it's likewise probably better to be safe than sorry. With smoking, it's very rare that anyone would have one or two cigarettes during a pregnancy. People either care enough to stop, or they just smoke throughout. There are other drugs that are well known to cause problems for unborn children, and many of these are of an addictive nature and not the sort of thing that most users are doing casually. Then there are many more drugs that simply aren't well enough studied for us to even know what the long term effects are.

If a person is unable to stop using substances for 9 months, perhaps they're not mature enough to be having children anyway?

And this goes for partners too. Of course, it depends on the specifics of the relationship. For example, my girlfriend smokes, but as for drinking, she can mostly take it or leave it, so if she was pregnant, I would consider it supportive for me stop using nicotine products for the duration, but it probably wouldn't bother her at all if I kept on having the occasional drink. But if you and your partner are accustomed to going out partying together every weekend, I think it would be beyond inconsiderate to continue going out and getting pissed and leaving your pregnant partner at home. But ultimately, the person who is effectively a life-support system for an unborn child has the final responsibility of making sure they are looking after that child and not potentially contributing to health problems that will affect them for their entire life.

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I even gave up coffee whilst i was incubating mini me's. Even after birth, i was careful about what i put in my body as i didn't want my baby to ingest what i was ingesting through the milk. I just wanted to give my kids the best start i could provide. Dunno if all my efforts made any difference though...brats !!!!, lol, not really. My kids were good sized healthy babies with no allergies or dramas at birth, but sometimes, thats just the luck of the draw.

Some people don't have much will power when it comes to addictions, and some people just don't care. I am petty sure my mum would have drank a lot when she was pregnant with me. I am/was a healthy kid/baby, but i think i am missing some brain cells. :P

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My friend is a heroin baby and you can see where his problems stem from. I'm not sure if it was

the actual drugs or the equilibrium he was brought up in . But he did not get the best start in life

and he has such deep problems and will probably end up in jail. His mother had a drug problem

and never received the care needed to treat her addiction . Im sure it would be cheaper and more

ethical to treat her first for her addiction. If she fails treatment maybe as a last resort .

Did you know in England if your a drug addict and in need of some cash the government will

pay you to let them sterilize you .

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I'll just leave this here.

http://altering-perspectives.com/2013/11/effect-cannabis-pregnant-women-newborns.html

In the late 1960s, grad student Melanie Dreher was chosen by her professors to perform an ethnographic study on marijuana use in Jamaica to observe and document its usage and its consequences among pregnant women.

Dreher studied 24 Jamaican infants exposed to marijuana prenatally and 20 infants that were not exposed. Her work evolved into the book Women and Cannabis: Medicine, Science and Sociology, part of which included her field studies.

Most North American studies have shown marijuana use can cause birth defects and developmental problems. Those studies did not isolate marijuana use, however, lumping cannabis with more destructive substances ranging from alcohol and tobacco to meth and heroin.

In Jamaica, Dreher found a culture that policed its own ganja intake and considers its use spiritual. For the herbs impact when used during pregnancy, she handed over reports utilizing the Brazelton Scale, the highly recognized neonatal behavioral assessment that evaluates behavior.

The profile identifies the babys strengths, adaptive responses and possible vulnerabilities. The researchers continued to evaluate the children from the study up to 5 years old. The results showed no negative impact on the children, on the contrary they seemed to excel.

Plenty of people did not like that answer, particularly her funders, the National Institute on Drug Abuse. They did not continue to flip the bill for the study and did not readily release its results.

March of Dimes was supportive, Dreher says. But it was clear that NIDA was not interested in continuing to fund a study that didnt produce negative results. I was told not to resubmit. We missed an opportunity to follow the study through adolescence and through adulthood.

Not at all saying I would smoke if I were pregnant, and I but I think all substances should not be painted with the same brush, but rather assessed individually. That of course, is highly unlikely to happen in our current system.

A friend of mine told me her mother took LSD while pregnant with her, and she is an exceptionally creative, intelligent and innovative thinker and an incredible artist. I don't know her well enough to comment on wether or not she has any deeper detrimental psychological problems that may be linked to exposure to LSD while in the womb, but to me she seems like one of the most sane and grounded people I have met.

Of course none of this is mentioned to promote or condone drug use during pregnancy, I just think its unfair to lump all substances together and claim they have equally detrimental effects, which is what this law seems to do.

If a person is unable to stop using substances for 9 months, perhaps they're not mature enough to be having children anyway?.

Amen to that. Sadly maturity has never factored into someone's ability to conceive a child.

Bigred, they have a similar scheme here in NZ, except I don't think they offer you money. If you are a beneficiary with more than one child, your case manager can suggest that you should be sterilised. At this stage you can turn it down, although they can continue to reccomend it each time they see you. Yick.

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What about dads who take crack then knock up a bird? Is there sperm damaged or the DNA weakened in a way so that the 'golden winner' mightn't have been at full potential if the father wasn't a cracky?

Soon as these laws go ahead, they'll need to move the boundary a bit further at some point... Anybody with foreign non pharma prescribed entity's in their system will be reprimanded for even holding hands and 'tempting the urge'.... Now there's a screen play...

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A lot of the time when older research is regularly quoted outside of the literature, it can be an indication that there is some confirmation bias. That is, certain groups hold a certain position, so they repeatedly quote one or two papers from decades ago that agree with their position, while ignoring the most recent research. Alternatively, it can be an indication that there hasn't been much research since, and it is the only available work to cite. Older research will often be cited within the scientific literature, but in any serious work it will always be woven into a framework that tells a story about what our understanding used to be, what the pioneering work was, how our understanding has changed, whether earlier work has been validated by more recent results, etc.

Here is the abstract from the paper based on this research

 

This research provides data on the development of 59 Jamaican children, from birth to age 5 years, whose mothers used marijuana during pregnancy. Approximately one-half of the sample used marijuana during pregnancy and were matched with non-users according to age, parity, and socioeconomic status. Testing of the children was done at 1, 3, and 30 days of age with the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scales and at ages 4 and 5 years with the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities. Data about the child's home environment and temperament were collected from direct observations as well as from standardized questionnaires. The results show no significant differences in developmental testing outcomes between children of marijuana-using and non-using mothers except at 30 days of age when the babies of users had more favourable scores on two clusters of the Brazelton Scales: autonomic stability and reflexes. The developmental scores at ages 4 and 5 years were significantly correlated to certain aspects of the home environment and to regularity of basic school (preschool) attendance

I cannot find the full article, so if anyone has it, I'd personally be interested in reading the full methodology. One thing that jumps out at me here is the small sample size. Considering the controls, they may have had, for example, a category of first-time mothers between the ages of 20 and 25 years whose annual income is

This is a more recent study, which had a whopping sample size of 24,874, and also attempted to control for use of other drugs:

 

Birth outcomes associated with cannabis use before and

during pregnancy

Abstract:

INTRODUCTION: This study aimed to examine the association between cannabis use before and during pregnancy and birth outcomes.

RESULTS: Overall, 26.3% of women reported previous use of cannabis and 2.6% reported current use. Multivariate analysis, controlling for potential confounders, including tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, and use of other illicit drugs, showed that cannabis use in pregnancy was associated with low birth weight (odds ratio (OR) = 1.7; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.3-2.2), preterm labor (OR = 1.5; 95% CI: 1.1-1.9), small for gestational age (OR = 2.2; 95% CI: 1.8-2.7), and admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (OR = 2.0; 95% CI: 1.7-2.4).

DISCUSSION: The results of this study show that the use of cannabis in pregnancy is associated with increased risk of adverse birth outcomes. Prevention programs that address cannabis use during pregnancy are needed.

METHODS: Data were from women birthing at the Mater Mothers' Hospital in Brisbane, Australia, over a 7-y period (2000-2006). Women were interviewed in the initial antenatal visit about their use of cannabis and other substances. Records for 24,874 women who provided information about cannabis use, and for whom birth outcomes data were available, were included in the analysis.

 

A total of 24,874 women who gave birth to live babies over this

period were included in the study

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They need to do way instain mother> who kill their babbys. becuse these babby cant frigth back?

It was on the news this mroing a mother in ar who had kill her three kids. they are taking the three babby back to new york too lady to rest my pary are with the father who lost his chrilden ; i am truley sorry for your lots

Edited by Seldom

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They need to do way instain mother> who kill their babbys. becuse these babby cant frigth back?

It was on the news this mroing a mother in ar who had kill her three kids. they are taking the three babby back to new york too lady to rest my pary are with the father who lost his chrilden ; i am truley sorry for your lots

WTF?

Did you post that from a phone or write this before you'd had your morning coffee ?

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