{"id":65062,"date":"2014-11-14T10:23:03","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T10:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=65062"},"modified":"2014-11-14T10:23:03","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T10:23:03","slug":"child-sues-mom-drinking-pregnant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=65062","title":{"rendered":"Child sues mom for drinking while she was pregnant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Can a fetus sue? That&#8217;s the question a London court will have to decide after a 7-year-old child&#8217;s guardians have decided to <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/nypost.com\/2014\/11\/06\/girl-born-with-fetal-alcohol-disorder-wants-to-sue-mom\/\" target=\"_blank\">sue the child&#8217;s mother for allegedly drinking heavily<\/a> <\/strong>during her pregnancy.<\/p>\n<p>Reportedly, the child has fetal alcohol syndrome as a result of mom&#8217;s drinking. It&#8217;s unclear what the disorder has done to the girl, but\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fetal_alcohol_syndrome\" target=\"_blank\">fetal alcohol syndrome<\/a> can cause severe intellectual and physical disabilities.<\/p>\n<p>The child&#8217;s lawyers have argued that the mom, who was 17 when she was pregnant and reportedly <strong>drank several bottles of vodka and cans of beer daily<\/strong>, committed a criminal act by drinking so heavily while with child.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s no doubt that the girl and her caregivers must be angry and frustrated with what the mom allegedly did &#8212; and you can&#8217;t blame them for wanting her punished somehow.<\/p>\n<p>For a long time the effects of heavy drinking on a fetus have been well known &#8212; it&#8217;s not like she took a particular medication and didn&#8217;t understand that there could be repercussions with the baby&#8217;s health.<\/p>\n<p>But should a <strong>child really be able to sue a mother for what happened while in gestation<\/strong>?<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m generally not in favor of the slippery slope argument, but this is one of those few times that it really is,&#8221; says Florida criminal defense attorney Janet Johnson. &#8220;I mean what about the child who says mom ate a lot of candy, now I&#8217;m diabetic?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The list of things a mom can&#8217;t\/shouldn&#8217;t do while pregnant gets longer and more detailed every year.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Moms have it tough enough<\/strong> &#8212; do we really need them worried about getting sued by the fetus who grows up to blame his or her short stature on pregnant mom&#8217;s brie and sushi habit?<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe the fact that he or she didn&#8217;t get into Harvard can all be traced back to mom not playing those Baby Einstein tapes in utero?<\/p>\n<p>The London case will hinge on whether or not a fetus can be considered a &#8220;person&#8221; and have a right to sue. Talk about another can of worms just waiting to be opened!<\/p>\n<p>A lower London court has ruled the child can&#8217;t sue but her lawyers are appealing.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Source:\u00a0thestir.cafemom.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can a fetus sue? That&#8217;s the question a London court will have to decide after a 7-year-old child&#8217;s guardians have decided to sue the child&#8217;s mother for allegedly drinking heavily during her pregnancy. Reportedly, the child has fetal alcohol syndrome as a result of mom&#8217;s drinking. It&#8217;s unclear what the disorder has done to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":65063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[38,7],"class_list":["post-65062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-togbe-afede-xiv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}