In England, drinking during pregnancy could be penalized. The country’s justice system will look into the case of a girl with fetal alcohol disorder, and rule on the mother’s case.
The consumption of alcohol by pregnant women could become an offense under UK law. The story reported by the weekly Le Point website takes place in the English county of Greater Manchester. There, the health system of the city of Manchester has supported for two years now a disabled girl victim of fetal alcohol syndrome, and placed in a foster family. But now, the British municipality is asking for financial compensation from the child’s biological mother, responsible for her daughter’s disability. She must participate in the many medical costs.
“No possible harm to a fetus”
In 2011, elected officials from Manchester City Council appealed to the County Regional Court to have the mother convicted under the Personal Injury Act of 1861. This compensation would, according to them, be part of a system of compensation for victims of crimes. After judgment, this first jurdiction established a direct link between maternal excesses and illness. She de facto condemned the mother to an obligation of compensation. But subsequently, another court, the Administrative Appeals Chamber, quashed this decision in December 2013 on the grounds that the “unborn” child was not a full “person”, and therefore that ‘there could be no harm to a fetus.
The English Court of Appeal can create new case law
Thus, it is now for the Court of Appeal of England, the second highest judicial authority in the country after the Supreme Court, to decide this debate. If it decided to agree with the Manchester City Council, it would create with this decision a new case law, a precedent which would have the force of law. As a result, all physical damage caused by alcohol abuse to the fetus would then become reprehensible throughout British territory, as is the case, for example, in the United States, or in Poland.
And this case law could well lead to many convictions, because this syndrome is far from being a trivial phenomenon. According to the Department of Health, this fetal alcohol spectrum disorder affects around 7,000 births in the United Kingdom at varying levels of intensity each year. This figure must nevertheless be qualified, according to British experts interviewed by Le Figaro, because “the link between infirmity and alcohol consumption habits is still difficult to assess. In addition, with alcohol, there is no dose without risk for the fetus.
Alcohol: no dose without risk for the fetus
Alcohol is, in fact, a particularly teratogenic substance, that is to say responsible for malformations in the fetus. Each glass therefore potentially exposes the unborn child to a risk, without it being possible to define a dose or a less dangerous period than another.
And the consequences for the 7,500 to 8,000 children concerned each year in France are very variable. Different organs can be affected, the heart or the palate for example, but alcohol remains particularly deleterious for the brain of the child. Fetal alcohol syndrome is the 1e cause of non-genetic mental retardation in France. To a lesser extent, children present with attention disorders, difficulty concentrating, short-term memorization or learning to arithmetic.
Finally, there is also a price to pay for society: the care of a child victim of fetal alcohol syndrome costs 1.3 million euros, while his disability was completely avoidable, worried recently in why actor Dr Denis Lamblin, pediatrician in Saint-Denis de la Réunion, and president of the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome France (SAF) association.
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