Pregnancy and Crack Cocaine

A recent news article titled "Children born to crack addicts have troubles, but they aren't doomed" give some hopeful news. If your pregnant daughter is using crack cocaine during her pregnancy, don't encourage her to abort the baby. Instead, help her quit using the drug and get medical treatment immediately.

This news article says "Are there actually drug effects? Yes," said Barry Lester, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University who directs the large federally funded Maternal Lifestyle Study. "But they're small, not huge. ... These kids are not damaged in the way we first thought."

What challenges does her baby face?

• "A small reduction of IQ; more difficulty in cognitive areas, such as planning and organization; some are harder to control at times; more issues at birth."
• "Cocaine exposure in the womb increases the risk of complications, miscarriages and stillbirths."
• "Their limbs would be stiff. Or they'd have problems keeping formula down. Sometimes it would be Parkinson-like trembling. "But those things tended to resolve within nine months," McMann said."
• "a pool of studies involving more than 4,400 children found no significant effect on IQ or language development. The largest of the studies showed an average four-point reduction in IQ at age 7."

"At Boston University, Deborah Frank agreed: "The differences are so subtle you can mainly only detect them in large groups, during a study. It's not like you can walk into a classroom and say that kid over there was exposed to such and such drug. But you can walk in and say that kid was exposed to alcohol and has fetal alcohol syndrome." After monitoring these children into their teen years, researchers believe cocaine exposure is less severe than alcohol and comparable to tobacco use during pregnancy.Less damage may result from a chemical circulating in the mother than in the poverty or poor parenting resulting from drug addiction in the home."

Help your pregnant daughter get medical treatment for any drugs she is using, including cigarettes. Help her stop using drugs and alcohol right away. There will be consequences to both her health and the health of the baby, but these may be manageable and are not good excuses to pressure her into an abortion.