In last Friday’s issue,
The Post
reported the claim that impoverished women in Athens County lack the education to know that drug addiction during pregnancy is harmful.
While poverty, drug use, and poor quality education are all significant problems in Athens, phrasing the connections between them in this way supposes that these women are making an affirmative, if misinformed, decision to be addicted during pregnancy, and if they were instructed that drugs are bad, they would decide otherwise.
Is it not more parsimonious to assume that pregnant poor women in Athens County are addicted for the same reasons non-pregnant poor women -- and men -- are addicted, and that they failed to kick their habits prior to becoming pregnant for the same reasons other people have difficulty kicking addictive drugs? Escaping addiction can be a lifelong struggle under the best of circumstances, and fewer than half of all pregnancies (in the one study on rural Appalachia I was able to locate) are planned.
While River Rose (the maternity center at O’Bleness hospital and the source of the data in the article) and Holzer Clinic both offer addiction services to pregnant clients, opiate cessation therapy can be extremely difficult for poor or rural people to access otherwise. Implying that young women who are still addicted when they find themselves pregnant are somehow indifferent to or unaware of the problems caused by drug use during pregnancy is inaccurate and disrespectful.
More education is never a bad thing, for rich and poor alike, but if you want to make a difference in the health of Athens County newborns, improve access to smoking and addiction counseling for everyone, before they or their partners become pregnant.
Anne Farbman is a graduate student at Ohio University
