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Pregnancy and Legal Substance Abuse
Mar 28, 2012 Editorial
In an age of asserting rights of women and minorities, the rights of the unborn seem to be stillborn. There are concerns about aborting the unborn but what about the damage that the unborn suffers due to smoking and alcohol use – both of which are legal? And this is in spite of the tremendous publicity undertaken by several departments of government, especially the Ministry of Health and Social Security.
The scientific literature confirms the folk wisdom that we are what we eat. When it comes to a pregnant woman, her child is not only what she eats but everything else that enters her bloodstream through whatever route. The effects cascade throughout life. During pregnancy, ingestion of alcohol causes a multitude of harm to the foetus. Prenatal alcohol exposure is one of the leading causes of birth defects, developmental disorders and mental retardation in children.
The foetal central nervous system is particularly vulnerable to alcohol; this vulnerability contributes to many of the long-term disabilities and disorders seen in individuals with prenatal alcohol exposure. Diagnoses associated with prenatal alcohol exposure include foetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), alcohol-related neuro-developmental disorder, and alcohol-related birth defects.
Alcohol passes easily through the placental barrier and the foetus cannot break down the alcohol as quickly as the mother and so the foetus receives a higher concentration of alcohol. Babies born to mothers who used alcohol are likely to be born with low birth weight, small head circumference, developmental delay, organ dysfunction, facial abnormalities, epilepsy and poor coordination.
Nervous and brain disorders are especially prominent if the alcohol is imbibed during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy, since it is during these trimesters that complex brain development occurs and this is why the babies are born with poor motor skills and poor learning abilities. Physical deformation of the brain itself may occur, with small head size and other abnormalities like cerebella hypoplasia.
If alcohol is consumed during the first trimester, alcohol interferes with the migration and organisation of brain cells, causing structural deformities. During the third trimester, damage can be caused to the hippocampus, affecting memory, emotion and the encoding of auditory and visual information. Babies who suffer from growth deficiency, all three facial deformities, central nervous system damage and prenatal alcohol exposure, suffer from Foetal Alcohol Syndrome.
Children, who do not suffer from all three characteristics, are said to be suffering from Foetal Alcohol Effects (FAE).
The effects of smoking by pregnant women are just as serious. Cigarette smoke contains over 4000 chemicals, with lead and cyanide being just two of the sixty-plus carcinogenic chemicals. The nicotine narrows blood vessels in the umbilical cord, effectively decreasing the amount of oxygen available to the baby. And that’s not all, the carbon monoxide combines with the red blood cells carrying the oxygen, decreasing the oxygen capacity of the red blood cells.
Cigarette smoking during pregnancy is associated with negative reproductive consequences for male foetuses in adult life such as reduced testicular volume and sperm concentration. Babies born to women who smoke are usually underweight due to their underdeveloped bodies. Their lungs may not even be able to work on their own due to delayed lung development due to the nicotine. These babies are also especially vulnerable to asthma and other respiratory ailments.
Also, babies whose mothers smoked during the first trimester of pregnancy are likely to suffer from heart defects at birth. Nicotine also retards brain development- the developing brain is particularly sensitive to low oxygen levels, especially affecting the areas of the brain that control breathing. Additionally, nicotine is poisonous to the areas of the brain directly involved with heart and breathing functions.
Passive smoking (inhalation of second-hand smoke) also affects the baby and may lead to underweight babies being delivered. The smoke that burns off the end of a cigarette actually contains more harmful substances (tar, carbon monoxide, nicotine) than the smoke inhaled by the smoker. Smoking also affects the baby indirectly: the nicotine increases the risk of premature separation, placental abnormalities. Let’s be observant of the rights of the unborn.
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