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Should Woman Get 5 Years in Prison for Drunken Breastfeeding?

Video by Opposing Views Editorial Staff
(July 14, 2009) in Society / Crime
A North Dakota woman has pleaded guilty to child neglect after police found her nursing her 6-month old baby while intoxicated. She now faces five years in prison for her crime. Is this a fair sentence? Fox News legal analysts debate the issue.

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Should Woman Get 5 Years in Prison for Drunken Breastfeeding?

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  • Clay
    more prisons

    Here we go with the prison mentality thing again,we will never learn.
    The woman has probably already lost her child to child services,and now they want to lock her up so we can pay for her detention and upkeep. Why not put her under house arrest and only allow her to be at home or at work,giving her public service hours to occupy her weekends and curtail her time for drinking instead? Send her thru a rehab program to help her if she has a drinking problem,and send her to classes to learn why she shouldn't breast feed while drunk.
    Prison is for violent criminals and the housing of non-violent criminals with them endangers them more than it does us if they are on the streets.

    - ClayUS July 14, 2009 5:23PM

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  • skeptikos
    Cheap and easy

    I do not think North Dakota should spend thousands of dollars attempting to rehabilitate this irresponsible waste of human life. I have a simple solution: one bullet, one gun, and a shallow grave is all this women deserves. Its quick, easy and best of all cheap.

    Spend the money on educating the child so that maybe someday we will have a productive human being instead of a waste of our taxes and time.

    Sounds harsh but I have given up on people that are eating away at what little moral fiber we have left in this country.

    - skeptikosUS July 14, 2009 5:34PM

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    • mike
      Ah, yes. Moral fiber.

      Clearly your morality is severely constipated. Either that or you're tired of this website exhausting every other potential for debate and you're just trolling for a sucker like me to take the bait.

      - mikeUS July 15, 2009 1:13PM

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    • lostlo
      Classy

      I doubt your serious, but please consider that you've just:

      a) Decided that you can judge who is and is not moral
      b) Decided that those who are immoral by your judgment are unworthy to live
      c) Announced your plan to murder anyone who is unworthy in your eyes

      Congratulations, you're now prepared to start your own holocaust!

      Good luck with the whole "moral" thing. I think you might want to review your assumptions before you start with the killing, though, just a friendly tip.

      - lostloUS July 15, 2009 1:18PM

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  • Hope7
    Your joking right?

    And I recently heard a 72 yo man was taking photos up a womans dress and he had taken lots of photos of womans bodies and yet there is nothing on the law books to stop a real pervert but you jail a woman for doing something stupid? This man is no doubt thinking of or doing far worse in private than what he did in public so he is the real danger and yet they jail a mother and hurt her and her baby. Our system is too screwed up. Maybe the change Obama is bringing is not the right one.
    She was wrong and she needs counseling but to jail her is outrageous and criminal in itself.

    - Hope7US July 15, 2009 9:29AM

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  • Blackbird
    Cheaper and quicker

    to just shoot her. But where will I ever get a gun???

    - BlackbirdUS July 15, 2009 11:37AM

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  • tweldy
    This is exceedingly ill informed...

    BAC in a hard core alcoholic is rarely going to exceed .4 percent. That would make the absolute upper bound of alcohol content in the milk .4 percent, but most likely a lot less. So lets take a look at this:

    Common Alcohol Content
    Hard Liquor: 40 percent
    Wine: 15 percent
    Beer: 5 percent
    Breastmilk of an extremely drunk person: less than 1/2 of 1 percent

    The threat to the child would have been if she was drinking while pregnant. Drinking while breastfeeding ... probably not as much alcohol exposure as the natural ethanol metabolites for gut yeast after eating a piece of bread. Once again an example of a government that does not think before it acts.

    - tweldyUS July 15, 2009 11:47AM

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  • locavore
    The title of this article is stupid

    And so is Fox News. The woman was not arrested for breastfeeding drunk, she was arrested for neglecting and abusing her child.

    - locavore July 15, 2009 11:50AM

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  • camosoul77
    uh...

    To answer the headline directly, no. Talk about a nanny state...

    This is stupid, squared.

    Politicians won't rest until everyone is a criminal and all children are raised exclusively through their indoctrination process... Aren't the Public Schools enough already?

    I guess they just want more control... They never have enough.

    Big Brother is getting dangerously close to forcing parents of every walk of life to kill to keep their own children.

    While I don't condone her behavior, woe be to anyone who tries to take my son from me. The only mark I can put against this woman, is failing to defend her child from true evil.

    CPS are the ones who should be locked up.

    Why would you want to shoot here, really, what's the big deal? It still beats the filth you buy off the shelf... You may as well lock up any parents who ever fed their kid McDonald's. That is much worse.

    - camosoul77US July 15, 2009 11:51AM

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  • cherrybouch
    Opinions are Not Evidence Based

    While it is obviously not a good idea or recommended to breastfeed while intoxicated, it is not known to cause damage to the breastfeeding baby. There has only been one case of alcohol consumption affecting a breastfed baby and that was with a mother who was a severe alcoholic. Obviously, more research needs to be done in this area before we start accusing mothers of child abuse just for nursing while intoxicated. We do know that there are many health risks associated with formula feeding. We known those risks outweigh any risks of an occasional drink or two while breastfeeding. We don't know what the risks of nursing while intoxicated are currently, but it's nothing like pumping out a gin & tonic. The body does metabolize (at least some of) the alcohol before it reaches the breast milk. We don't arrest parents for feeding babies kool aid in a bottle or making other poor nutritional choices for their children . It's too hard of a line to draw.

    My knowledge of this situation is only based on this video, and it appears that there are other concerning issues with this woman's mothering. She definitely needs help to get out of an abusive situation and be supported in her mothering. A young mother in her situation who chooses to breastfeed made that decision because she wants the best for her baby. She should not be separated from her baby and should be supported to continue breastfeeding. The benefits of breastfeeding and bonding with the mother can have a tremendous positive impact on this baby that seems to have been more into a stressful situation.

    - cherrybouchUS July 15, 2009 11:53AM

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  • Rashi18
    No!

    Give her baby to a Mormon family (they don't drink - or at least it is highly unlikely). The family could raise the child until it is 18, then tell him/her about his/her real mother and why he/she was taken away. Let the adult child make a decision about establishing a relationship with their biological mom.

    It might also be a reasonable choice to perform a bilateral radical mastectomy, or at least offer her the option. That way, she could avoid potential breast cancer , avoid prison, keep on drinking (and neglect her child in other ways), and reduce costs of incarceration. I belief that the radical mastectomy would probably be in keeping with an Islamic form of punishment (they chop off the hands of thieves, for example).

    Another alternative might be to consider a brain transplant for this woman.

    Tell her to put the liquor in a baby bottles. That would be a good way for her to bond with her child. They could share.

    - Rashi18US July 15, 2009 11:54AM

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  • quantummechanik
    The problem is

    neither thing she did was against the law . We can't imprison people for doing legal things.

    - quantummechanik July 15, 2009 12:27PM

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  • MaryLou22
    should woman get 5 years in prison for drunken breastfeeding?

    First I would just like to say that the age of the baby is unclear. The print says 6 months but the video says 6 weeks.

    Was she actually breastfeeding or attempting to breastfeed. As the video pointed out that was the last straw and knowing how breastfeediing works it would have taken a while for this particular woman's body in her condition to let down her milk if at all. If she was stopped before that happened then there would be no crime . Of course any good lawyer would be able to bring this out in a court of law . I would think she should be held accountable for the other forms of abuse and they would hold more weight when prosecuting this woman. So my answer to should she do time, NO. Does she need help YES!

    As an aside I wish that the media would stop putting breastfeeding out there in a negative way whenever there is a chance. The world needs more breastfed babies.

    - MaryLou22US July 15, 2009 12:39PM

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  • deekeith
    domestic abuse

    As I recall this women called the police because she was being abused by her spouse. They happened to arrive and find she was nursing her 6 month old and appeared intoxicated. First of all did anyone get a blood alcohol on the infant, how about the mom? I think this is a case of abuse from the police along with the husband and fear caused this women to plead guilty. Alcohol enters and exits human milk with out binding to it. Which means that there is a lag time after drinking for the milk to have alcohol in it, but how much is really available for the infant to metabolize will depend on how much is available from moms blood, as blood level drops so does the level of alcohol in milk level. Typically infants don't like the taste and will take in less. So one would need moms milk, moms blood and infants blood to test. At the very least infants blood. So if the alcohol level goes down in the blood stream it also does so in the milk. So while she well have been intoxicated,no one seems to know how intoxicated, it appears some overly zealous people have convicted her with out a lot of evidence. In history do we really think that women through out time women have not drunk alcohol while breastfeeding or pregnant? Fact there was a time when the ALCOHOL WAS SAFER THAN THE WATER. While that may no longer be case the fact remains it happens. I am not pro-breastfeeding moms or pregnant moms drinking. But I am also a realist some one needs to help this family not send the mom to jail. The issue here is not alcohol in human milk but can an intoxicated parent care for an infant. How about abusive father in home and is he intoxicated, does he smoke? HOW about women who are pregnant smoking cigarettes should they all go to jail? While they should not smoke there is some rights of the person who owns the body. Feminists should be all over this. And any attorney who represents this mom and infant should understand that with out blood alcohol of infant there is no case.

    - deekeithUS July 15, 2009 1:40PM

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  • cburkitt
    Non-issue

    This is a non-issue generated by sensationalized reporting. The woman pleaded guilty to child neglect, which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years. She has not been sentenced, and it is not clear that the breastfeeding incident carried much weight beyond alarming the officers who responded to the domestic dispute. Child neglect is a serious crime and should not be lightly passed over. The woman also has a long criminal record, 27 convictions in 8 years. She's not an innocent, young mother railroaded by an overly harsh judicial system.

    - cburkitt July 15, 2009 2:19PM

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