Pregnancy and Drugs and Jail

For my topic of choice I have decided to talk about things we have been talking about in my social problems class. The issue of drug use or other harmful agents during pregnancy. A women can be put in prison for snorting cocaine or smoking crack while pregnant if the child is harmed or not, but nothing is done to the mother of a child born with fetal alcohol syndrome. Are the two not on the same level as far as harming an unborn fetus. Why does our society chose to accept smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol? Maybe it just might be because our society makes billions of dollars off of it. All are drugs and all addictive: alcohol, cocaine, cigarettes, marijuana, crack, meth, ecstasy, and so much more, but our society has only made substances they can not tax illegal. It bothers me personally that a women is punished for harming her unborn fetus in one way but not an other. If the child really doesn’t mean enough to you that you would take care of and protect it than you should have had an abortion. Just like you chose to snort a line of cocaine you chose to keep your child. Also if a mother is choosing to do drugs while pregnant than what kind of parent are they going to be. Its not necessarily setting the child up for a promising future, if there mother cares so little about them, if there mother is addicted to drugs, or if there parent had the lifestyle of doing drugs.