UPDATE - Per the discussion in the comments, here's some info from the National Advocates for Pregnant women on drug use during pregnancy. There's a fact sheet that refers to studies (although it doesn't name them! drat! My search continues!) and many articles that deal with how the "crack baby" myth is used to criminalize poor, and mostly African-American, women.
Back when I tried to keep my raging radical feminism separate from my raging political radicalism, I kept a separate blog called The Fetal Position where I angrily told theocrats, fundies, bitter folks young and old, be-penised or vagina-ed, to keep their grubby, most likely improperly-washed hands off and get their own damn uterus.
It’s also where I wrote this post, about an article from the Washington post detailing a report put out by the CDC in response to the U.S. ranking second to last in infant mortality rates in the developed world (in your face, Latvia!). According to the article, the report advised that all women who had functional ovaries should consider themselves ‘pre-pregnant’, whether they were planning on getting pregnant in the near future or otherwise, and therefore abstain from drinking fun things, eating fun things, doing fun things, or thinking of themselves as human beings entitled to have any enjoyment in their lives.
Of course, if you actually read the report, unlike me, then you would have known that it said a lot of things, including that the general health of women of child-bearing age could be improved. (Or, as John McCain would say, “health”.) But "Study gives detailed overview of complex issue with reasonable, science-based suggestions towards a solution" doesn't make for as catchy a headline as "Forever Pregnant".
Now, the CBC’s not going that far – but nothing exacerbates my Monday morning grouchies quite like two separate “Pregnant women who do X are bad!” stories. Don’t gain weight! Don’t drink coffee! Or else you are a TERRIBLE MOTHER who will probably want to have, like, ONE GLASS OF WINE, and should you suffer the tragedy of a miscarriage it will probably be YOUR FAULT because you went by a Starbucks and you INHALED.
Honestly, these types of reports are double-plus badness – another item on the already weighed-down shoulders of women, whose behaviours during pregnancy seem to be responsible for every possible aspect of their child and its development, from physical appearance, to character, to abilities and more (“damn you, slice of brie my mother had three months into her pregnancy, for preventing me from being a gorgeous, six-foot judo expert and concert pianist who solves crimes on her spare time using her hyper-sensitive sense of smell!”); PLUS another weapon for every self-righteous douchebag out there who gets off on judging a woman’s “morals” by her appearance, since nothing says irresponsible slut like a visibly pregnant woman, right douchebags? (Douchebags: “Nice sweater vest, man-hater.”) Better put her in her place, that uterus-having, life-creating, “I’m a human being with the ability to make decisions about what’s best for me, my body and my family”-thinking incubator.
Now, I’m not saying that research on healthy pregnancies isn’t important – it’s just frustrating that the studies (and the media coverage) focus on taking away stuff from women, rather than giving them stuff, like, say, comprehensive pre-natal health care. Because that would be SOCIALIST, and socialism is EVEN WORSE than having the second-highest infant mortality rate in the developed world. Or something like that.
