Should a Pregnant Woman Be Punished for Exposing Her Fetus to Risk?

In most ethical and legal respects a pregnant woman and her foetus can be considered separate. Both the woman and the fetus are normally affected by the well-being of one another for as persistent as each of them live. The ethical and legal issues are challenged deeply in lessons where the well-being of the fetus and the mother appear to be in conflict.Our clubhouse struggles with identifying cases where the pregnant womans interests and/or behaviors might put her fetus at risk. Criminal and/or civil loads should be used to terminate pregnant women from exposing their fetuses to risk. The state of Wisconsin enacted a statute allowing pregnant women whose habitual inebriantism exposes a fetus to substantial risks of physical harm to be interpreted into custody and belowgo involuntary patient alcohol intercession.Other states apply proposed or enacted bills that respond to women who expose a fetus to the harms of alcohol in gestation by means such as requiring involuntary civil commitment of the woman, requiring health practitioners to report newborns demonstrating prenatal exposure, expanding definitions of child go bad to include neonatal harm or prenatal damage to a child, and defining such acts as criminal mistreatment in the prototypical degree. 2 There have been many efforts to restrain women from exposing their fetuses to damaging drugs, specifically cocaine, by applying law enforcement measures.In the grown case of Whitner vs. State of South Carolina (1997), Cornelia Whitner was charged with criminal child neglect for exposing her fetus to cocaine. She was sentenced by a South Carolina court to eight age in prison. Her viable fetus was found to be protected under the states child endangerment statute. South Carolina currently remains the first and only state whose law recognizes the viable fetus as a person and accordingly permits criminal prosecution of women for endangerment of a fetus.Another prominent case that was reviewed by the U. S. Supreme beg was Ferguson vs. City of Charleston (2001). In 1989, a public hospital in Charleston, South Carolina began implementing a insurance policy to arbitrarily test women for drugs who came for prenatal care or delivery without their informed consent. If the women well-tried positive, they were arrested and not given the opportunity to seek drug treatment. In 1990, the policy was modified to allow the women to avoid being arrested if they entered into a drug treatment program, attended all their counseling appointments, and passed all their subsequent drug tests.Ten women tried positive for cocaine were arrested and responded by suing the hospital and the state. In 2001, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the women because the tests were administered without their consent. Drug and alcohol addictions are illnesses that exact some type of effective treatment to overcome them. I call up that women dont intentionally expose their fetuses to drug or alcohol abuse, but if it happens, I conceive the problem needs to be place and addressed immediately because obviously there is a problem.In my opinion, I believe that women should be punished for exposing their fetuses to drug and alcohol abuse. The fetuses are innocent and shouldnt have to suffer on the ignorance of their mother. I think that treatment should be offered and monitored frequently. If the program is not followed by the pregnant woman, then she should not be allowed the opportunity to raise the child until she has proven that she will provide a safe and drug-free environment for the child.