Research Policy for Substance Abuse in Pregnant Women

Research Policy for Substance Abuse in Pregnant Women
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Research Policy for Substance Abuse in Pregnant Women
Situation
Problem
The abuse of drugs among pregnant women is a complicated issue to deal with since there is no universal policy that addresses the issue. Additionally, it entails balancing the fetus’s and the mother’s rights. The challenge demands a law that will respect and protect the welfare of both the infant and the woman’s autonomy. Many interventions have been developed to tackle the problem, including education, legal punishment, and rehabilitation among others (Forray, 2016). However, these approaches have dilemmas and complications, and they have not significantly reduced substance abuse during pregnancy, and hence more research is critical.
Recommended Policy
The proposal is to have a policy that mandates the allocation of a particular amount of the budget to the research of substance abuse in pregnant women.
Background
The number of women using drugs during pregnancy is becoming a huge problem in the United States and globally. Schueller (2015) reports that as many as 11% of women have used an illegal drug while they were pregnant, with most of them having used cocaine. Research indicates that substance abuse can have adverse effects on the unborn child, causing permanent health challenges such as cognitive and developmental disabilities. According to Stone (2015), some infants that were prenatally exposed to opioids show dysfunction and hyperirritability of the gastrointestinal tract, the nervous and respiratory systems. In some cases, the substance abuse can result in stillbirths. Additionally, the children born to pregnant women that abuse drugs can be born already addicted to the substances that limit most of the normal childhood activities.
Some similar policies have been enacted by some states to deal with the menace. The national and state governments allocate a portion of its budget to rehabilitation programs. However, the limitation is that the focus is on the treatment and little concentration is placed on the need for research to enhance these interventions. For this reason, there is no uniformly accepted approach to tackling the issue resulting in states adopting metho...