Baby born well-prepared for College
 

http://www.wrgb.com/news/local/local_news.asp#H2

Warren County Baby Born Drunk

Police in Glens Falls say its a case like they've never seen before. An expectant mother was rushed to Glens Falls Hospital on Saturday to deliver a baby. However, when the baby was born, it had a blood alcohol content of .18. That's over twice the legal limit for an adult. 22-year old Stacey Gilligan was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and sent to jail. No word on the condition of the baby.

I think the cops are getting a little out of hand these days with telling people what they can and can't do! :mad: :mad: :mad:

Really. Next thing they're going to tell women they're not entitled to their god-given right to inject heroin or snort coke when they're pregnant. Back in the day, fetuses knew how to handle their booze and drugs...:rolleyes:

Thats pretty messed up, Tracy.


:eek:

LOL Like your post made any more sense-

LOL

I think that is something called SARCASM. See dictionary.com for a definition.:p

I thought KillarneyRose's post was funny. I had a sarcastic remark to make too, but I don't really want the flames.

LOL @ KR :D

When you choose to have a baby, you take on responsibility for another person other than yourself. If you're not pregnant, then whatever you put into your body affects only you. This includes food, drink, medicinal drugs, and recreational drugs. (I'm setting aside the issue of secondhand smoke for the moment.) But if you've chosen to have a child, then for the 9 months of your pregnancy and for however long you breastfeed, everything you put into your body affects that baby as well.

I am making the assumption that the baby was wanted, because it was delivered, which implies that she was well into her third trimester if not actually due.

Becoming a mother is about the most selfless thing you can do. But it comes with certain responsibilities, and you can't pick and choose which responsibilities to honor and which to ignore.

C'mon Bethany, I can always count on you to post exactly what I'm thinking :D

Don't worry, I'm here to make you look better.

I don't know if you're serious or not, but I actually agree with this statement.

Edited.

If you reported a post in this thread, please consider it taken care of.

ZA

CTFU!

See, I'm going to stop drinking diet Coke when I read GC, cause my nose is taking a beating, and my laptop screen is getting all sticky!

holy jesus, i hope the baby is okay :(

Right after I found out I was pregnant with my oldest daughter I must have been thinking I was Mother Nature personified or something because I remember on the platform in Princeton waiting for the morning train into NY and there was this poor woman seated near me enjoying her morning cigarette. I fixed her with my holier-than-thou laser gaze and totally laid into her about how she was polluting the air around her with secondhand smoke and who knew how many pregnant ladies she'd affected with her selfishness, etc. Poor thing; I really scared her because the rest of the time I rode the train she always stayed as far away from me as possible!

The irony of the fact that I was working for Philip Morris totally escaped me at the time.

What was that girl thinking?! I just hope that the baby is okay and didn't suffer any brain damage!

Several years ago, I was staying at a hotel in Missouri. I saw a woman who was visibly pregnant smoking a cigarette. I was like WTF, didn't she know that she wasn't supposed to smoke while pregnant. I don't know how the baby turned out, if he or she was born at all. She was very selfish doing that!


http://www.computerpannen.com/cwm/co...ay/shocked.gif

Please tell me you don't think it's actually okay to smoke or drink while you're pregnant. Please, please tell me I'm misinterpreting you.

I think my post was deleted. :(

This is terrible about the poor drunk baby. I hope that the baby is ok.

lol@KR and AEPhiAlum

That is one of the saddest things I have ever heard. I had a friend that was affected with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) when I was younger. She had been adopted at birth and was a sweet, wonderful, person. She was very socially and intellectually behind though, and as we got older we necessarily grew apart. She did graduate from high school... She is a wonderful person but the potential that she had was reduced by this horrible affliction. :(

I suppose this is just out of sheer curiosity, but how did they know the baby was under the influence? I'm assuming that *that* much alcohol in the mother's system made for a somewhat less painful delivery. :rolleyes:

will the baby have
FAS? I hope not

I'm not expressing my personal opinion one way or the other on how pregnant women should conduct themselves. I'm saying that, in my opinion, a woman's right to privacy should always overrule the "rights" of a fetus, and putting women in jail for things that they do while pregnant is frightening.

Yes but a man's rule over his woman, essentially brings the rights of the fetus under his supervision if you think about it really.

-Rudey
--That means I can tell my woman to stop sniffing coke and put headphones on her tummy and listen to mozart any day or she'll be punished.

LOL! Darn....

I know I'm skirting dangerously close to the edge of the abortion debate with these thoughts, but I just have to respectfully disagree with you.

There is a huge difference between drinking/smoking/etc. at the beginning of a pregnancy - especially when you may not know you're pregnant - and doing it at the end.

This woman clearly knew she was pregnant. She knew she was very pregnant, about to give birth. She apparently intended to have the child, or I would assume that she would have had an abortion earlier.

If a mother gave alcohol or drugs to a baby or toddler, that would be child abuse. No question about that. So if she does the same thing in the last part of her pregnancy - giving alcohol or drugs to her unborn child by taking them herself - she should be held accountable!

I agree with all the people who think you should need a license to have a child! For goodness sakes, it's harder to get a driver's license!

I feel torn ladies and gentlemen. Follow my train of thought.

1. I'm a freak and love big pregnant women.
2. I love all my women to be drunk before hooking up with them.
3. I don't want to give the baby potential brain damage :(

-Rudey
--How do I satisfy my freak fetish while not creating kids with foreheads big enough to show movies on?

I think that this question is going to keep me up all night.

you're right. a woman should be allowed to do whatever she wants while she is pregnant as long as it is not harming her unborn baby. it is a well proven and studied fact that drinking alcohol while pregnant can cause irreperable damage that the child will have to live with.

so if the mom wants to go out dancing til 3am, or wear skanky clothes or gain lots of weight, go for it. but if she's drinking, smoking or doing drugs that is messed up and might ruin her unborn child for life.

she had 3 times the legal limit. 3 times. imagine how many times that is for a little baby.

scary.

a woman's body is not her own for 9 months while pregnant. she has to share it with another body and is solely in charge of how her baby will turn out. (except of course for birth defects that just happen--i'm not referring to them)

Hmmm. Yes, a woman, or a man, can do whatever she wants. But when doing that affects someone else, THEN the rules get involved. That baby didn't ask to get drunk. SHE wanted to booze it up. So, technically, she can be charged with

*a crime against a minor
*child abuse
*giving alcoholic beverages to a person under 21 (OMG!!!!!!!! This is illegal???!?!?!?!?! :eek: :rolleyes: )

Whatever you believe about the baby/fetus debate (its a baby), this is just straight up wrong, and no one can in all honesty deny this.

The key word in that sentence is CAN. It's not always going to happen. My lab partner in one of my class had 2 children ( she was a middle aged woman) and she had smoked all through her pregnancy. Her kids are maturing at a normal rate and they are physically and mentally healthy.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not condoning the use of drugs and alcohol during pregnancy. The mother is running a huge risk by doing that. If you're going to carry the fetus start taking some respnsibility.

But by the same token, this child might very well be a happy, healthy (both mentally and physically) baby.

what?

the article measured the baby's BAC, johnny pro-life, not the mother's - and, if you want 'baby's rights' then you'll have to apply the law to the babies as well, so the legal limit is still .10 (or .08 if you live in a quaker state like illinios or cali).

here's where the hypocrisy kicks in: if the mother died during delivery, under the logic we're seing, shouldn't the baby be convicted of manslaughter?

Valkyrie is completely correct, in my mind, in the way she's broken the situation down. Are you going to start putting mothers in jail for not getting enough folic acid? it's a simple extension of the principle being stated already, and the consequences are nearly as bad.

I agree with Valkyrie here.

Also, ksigRC made a great point. We don't know what the mothers blood alcohol level was. In fact its curious that isn't mentioned.

I don't know enough about the science behind how alcohol might cross over the placenta into the child to speculate on how much she had to drink.

For all we know, 2 glasses of wine may do that to a fetus.

Why was the baby even tested? Is that standard for a new born?

My suspicion is that the mother was showing obvious signs of intoxication and the baby had some observable problems after birth.

While I'm not a doctor, I would expect that a blood test would be standard operating procedure on a newborn that showed signs of distress, and with the mother visibly drunk, the doctors would want to see what the baby's alcohol level was, so they would know if the alcohol was the reason for its problems or if there was something else wrong.

Actually, no. There are two types of manslaughter under the law, neither of which apply here:

1. Voluntary manslaughter. The defendant had the intent to kill, but due to circumstances surrounding the crime, the higher offense of murder is not appropriate. Usually this means that the defendant acted in the "heat of passion," i.e., husband walked in on his wife getting it on with another guy and freaks out and shoots them both.

Here, there's no way we can conceive of a newborn having the intent to kill the mother. Regardless, usually young children are not viewed as capable of forming criminal intent anyway. (Example: a 2 year old picks up a gun that someone carelessly left within reach and somehow fires it, killing his older brother. The 2 year old is not going to be sent to jail for murder.)

2. Involuntary manslaughter. The defendant acted in a way that was "reckless," resulting in the accidental death of another person. Generally this means that there was a very substantial risk of serious bodily harm or death, and the defendant was aware of this risk but still committed the act.

Under some jurisdictions, there is also a lesser crime of "negligent homicide," where the risk was there and the defendant "should have been" aware of it.

Regarding the baby, there's no way that its conduct can be viewed as either reckless or negligent. All the baby did was get born. (It seems to me that the baby doesn't really do much - isn't the work all done by the mother?)

Here's an example: Bob is driving his car down the road, obeying all laws and safety rules, and in the bike lane to Bob's right, Joe is riding a bicycle, also obeying all the rules. Joe hits a rock or hole that he didn't notice, and the impact knocks him suddenly off his bike and into the road. Bob has no time to react and hits Joe, killing him. While Bob caused Joe's death, he clearly didn't have the intent to do so, nor was he acting negligently or recklessly.

From my understanding the deal with folic acid is that it helps prevent birth defects that while serious, would not occur in the majority of births. It's also a matter of degree, where ideally pregnant women would eat all their veggies and take vitamins to hit the target level, but pretty much everyone gets at least some folic acid in the average diet. Also, I was under the impression that the most important time for folic acid is actually right before you get pregnant - not when you're pregnant.

But here's the real issue: No, we are NOT going to put mothers in jail for not getting enough folic acid. As you put it, that's an "extension" of the principle. One of the points of criminal laws is to draw a line - what conduct does our society want to prohibit, and what will we allow, or in other words, how far do we want to "extend" the reach of the law?

I would think that most people could see a difference between not always following a perfect diet and a pregnant woman drinking alcohol, especially so late in pregnancy (i.e., in the 8th or 9th month, when the child could be born at any time and be healthy), and especially so severely as this article suggested.

And you've exceeded, by far, the literal level I was seeking - but the legalese is interesting, as you're obviously far more familiar with it.

However, here you've exactly hit my point - I was utilizing hyperbole to intimate that the reach of law has a sneaky way of continually extending itself, and that this case may be one where the extension is unjustified.

Here, the reason is that there's no real way to determine when the fetus becomes deserving of the rights, priviledges, and responsibilities afforded to everyone under our legal system - and, I happen to agree with Valkyrie when she says that she would be more comfortable keeping that legislative reach outside of a woman's body.

actually mr. obnoxious, i am the most pro-choice person you could ever meet. so how about you leave out the sarcastic remarks and i'll do the same. thanks.

i completely don't get you're statement on the baby being convicted of manslaughter. that is just ridiculous.

we're not talking about folic acid. i don't know where you come up with these examples. if you are 9 months pregnant you should not be drinking alcohol or smoking. at all. you'd have to be a pretty selfish person to chance harming your baby because you had to have the gratification of alcohol or nicotine. wait until the baby is born and then do what you want.

have you ever known a pregnant lady or held an infant? how could anyone in their right mind want to harm a child because they are selfish? if you choose to have a baby, there are certain things you should not do. it's as simple as that. if you choose to do them then you have serious problems.