HLSC220 - Health Care Ethics

Title
Assessment 1: Argumentative Essay
Student Name: Shraddha Bhattarai
Student number: S00289737
HLSC220 Semester 2, 2020
Assessment 1: Argumentative Essay
3. Expectant mothers who misuse alcohol and/or illicit drugs should be subject to mandatory reporting
requirements for child abuse.
Word count:

It’s clear that when an expectant mother abuses alcohol or other substances, they potentially
place danger on the fetus. Prenatal drug misuse has been a major issue globally, because it
exposes not just the mother but also her growing infant to toxic drugs (Angelotta & Appelbaum,
2017). It was reported that 15% of pregnant woman use alcohol and 5% of woman use illicit
drugs in United States (Geiderman & Marco, 2020). Once, a woman is pregnant it is important
that she leads a safe life for the wellbeing of her infant. Here, this paper stands the opinion that
pregnant women should be subject to a mandatory reporting requirement for cases of child abuse
by using supporting medical principles. Although, forcing on prenatal care is against the
fundamental right of mother but for the goodness of foetus and expectant mothers, it is necessary
to take such measures (Motoki, Cabar & Francisco, 2016).
At the outset, the first reason why pregnant women’s who use alcohol and other illegal
substances should be required to report is so they will be given an opportunity to learn about the
risk of these substances for the unborn child. Majority of parents are not aware about the use of
alcohol and those drugs which are very risky to use during the pregnancy as mother and child
both may have the short term and life-long challenges (Angelotta & Appelbaum, (2017). To the
mothers, the use of some drugs can increase the risk of miscarriage and can cause migraines,
seizures, or high blood pressure, heart problems, respiratory loss, strokes etc. And these life-
threatening health issues may be passed on to an unborn infant too (Oei, 2020).When a woman
uses some drugs regularly during pregnancy, a condition called neonatal abstinence syndrome
(NAS) may occur with the use of opioids, alcohol, caffeine and certain prescription sedatives by
a pregnant woman. In addition to it, alcohol easily crosses the placenta and damages brain
development and other organs of the fetus. Alcohol is breakdown far more slowly in the
immature body of the foetus than it is in the body of an adult. As a result, the alcohol level in the

baby’s blood can be higher and stay elevated than the mothers blood level which sometimes can
cause life-long damage to the baby. Moreover, alcohol/illegal substance using mothers also give
birth to “drug babies” children having lots of issues with their development ((Oei, 2020). During
pregnancy, taking drugs also increases the likelihood of birth defects, premature babies,
underweight babies etc. According to Australian institute of health and welfare (2017), more
than 60% perinatal death were reported due to various reasons such: congenital anomaly,
prenatal infection, hypertension, maternal conditions etc. which may be resulted due to use of
illicit substances.
Secondly, according to the Zoe’s laws Australia states that if someone caused a foetus to be
destroyed or harmed, they would be charged with serious physical harm to the foetus instead of
being charged with grievous physical harm to the pregnant woman (Anolak, 2015). Hence, in
Australia foetus of 20 weeks or more have the same legal rights as a human right. The principle
of Autonomy states that “peoples have their own right to make the decisions about their lives
without the interference of others” (Ashcroft, Dawson, Draper & McMillan 2007, p.4) So, after
20 weeks foetus have their own autonomous right to live a healthier life. Similarly, expectant
mothers have their own autonomy to live their life without any interruption. However, regardless
of pregnant mother’s autonomy, consuming alcohol/illict drugs is harmful for both mother and
foetus health. Hence, it is also a duty of Nurses or health care professionals to respect for
autonomy of foetus and made the mandatory reporting against expectant mothers who directly or
indirectly tries to harm unborn child.
Furthermore, the principles of beneficence are a moral obligation to act for the benefit of
supporting moral rules such as: protecting and defending other rights, preventing harm from
occurring harms to others, removing harmful conditions, rescuing people in danger etc.(Ashcroft,