Message in a Bottle

Janet Golden

Published by Harvard University Press 2006

Message in a Bottle

The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Janet Golden

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674037717

Overview
Contents

About this book

A generation has passed since a physician first noticed that women who drank heavily while pregnant gave birth to underweight infants with disturbing tell-tale characteristics. Women whose own mothers enjoyed martinis while pregnant now lost sleep over a bowl of rum raisin ice cream. In Message in a Bottle, Janet Golden charts the course of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) through the courts, media, medical establishment, and public imagination. Long considered harmless during pregnancy (doctors even administered it intravenously during labor), alcohol, when consumed by pregnant women, increasingly appeared to be a potent teratogen and a pressing public health concern. Some clinicians recommended that women simply moderate alcohol consumption; others, however, claimed that there was no demonstrably safe level for a developing fetus, and called for complete abstinence. Even as the diagnosis gained acceptance and labels appeared on alcoholic beverages warning pregnant women of the danger, FAS began to be de-medicalized in some settings. More and more, FAS emerged in court cases as a viable defense for people charged with serious, even capital, crimes and their claims were rejected. Golden argues that the reaction to FAS was shaped by the struggle over women's relatively new abortion rights and the escalating media frenzy over "crack" babies. It was increasingly used as evidence of the moral decay found within marginalized communities--from inner-city neighborhoods to Indian reservations. With each reframing, FAS became a currency traded by politicians and political commentators, lawyers, public health professionals, and advocates for underrepresented minorities, each pursuing separate aims.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
1. “We Realized We Were onto Something”: Naming FAS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. “Conceived in Gin”: Historical Sightings of Alcohol and Pregnancy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	16
3. “A Clinically Observable Abnormality”: Framing FAS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
4. “Not Quite Like Other Children”: FAS, Science, and Medicine Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	52
5. “According to the Surgeon General”: Warning Women against Drinking Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
6. “Tempest in a Cocktail Glass”: Pregnancy Policing and the Media Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	95
7. The Thorp Case: Jim Beam on Trial Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	120
8. “An Argument That Goes Back to the Womb”: Adoptions, Courtrooms, and FAS Today Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Pages
- Main content: 240

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Published: May 12, 2022
ISBN: 9780674037717

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Message in a Bottle

The Making of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome