The Women’s Resource Center and Department of Gender and Race Studies featured two graduate students in the last of its Brown Bag lectures on Wednesday.
Emily Unnasch and Maigan Sullivan, who are both pursuing master’s degrees in women’s studies, presented some of the research they have done while at the University.
Unnasch’s lecture, titled “Expendable Lives: Dangerous Assumptions Underlying the (Mis)Application of Alabama’s Chemical Endangerment Law to Pregnant Women and New Mothers,” was about Alabama’s chemical endangerment statute that criminalizes women who are addicted to illegal drugs while pregnant.
Laws that disproportionately punish pregnant women with addictions stem from the same logic that prompted the “crack baby” scare of the 1990s, Unnasch said. Babies who had been exposed to cocaine as fetuses were called “crack babies” and were believed to have mental, emotional and physical harm as a result.
“The problem is that there’s no such thing as a crack baby,” she said. “Experts have not been able to find a single bit of evidence of crack babies.”
Unnasch said Alabama’s legislators have used the same flawed logic to make laws excessively hard on women who use narcotics, such as methamphetamines, while pregnant.
In recent years, however, the medical world has changed its recommendation on how to deal with this issue.
“Virtually all medical organizations have taken a stance to oppose prosecution and emphasize treatment,” Unnasch said.
Still, recommendations of medical professionals have done little to change how the government is working to combat this issue.
“Currently, we are allocating our resources to jails and prisons and not drug treatment facilities,” Unnasch said. “There are only three drug treatment facilities in the state of Alabama that accept pregnant women.”
Alabama prisons do not properly care for pregnant women with addictions, she said.
“You’re lucky if you get drug treatment in jail,” Unnasch added. “Incarcerated women don’t typically get prenatal vitamins or doctor visits.”
In addition to the absence of prenatal care, she said, pregnant women are underfed and undernourished in prison.
“In Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women, you get a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of water for lunch,” Unnasch said. “Pregnant women get twice as much. Do you think two peanut butter sandwiches and water is enough nutrition for a pregnant woman?”
The second lecture, given by Maigan Sullivan, was titled “Got Milk? Moving Away From Reprocentric Visions of Breastfeeding-Towards More Expansive Possibilities.”
Rather than speaking of the benefits that infants receive from drinking breast milk, Sullivan’s research and lecture centered on the positive health benefits breast milk can have for adults.
“We are terrified of fluid that comes out of a woman’s body,” Sullivan said. “Men and women both are horrified at the thought of drinking breast milk.”
However, just as breast milk provides many health benefits for infants, she said, it also has beneficial properties for adults.
In one clinical study, breast milk was given to cancer patients who were undergoing chemotherapy, Sullivan said. Several of the benefits noticed shortly after patients started ingesting it included reduction of chemo symptoms, improved respiratory function, improved appearance and fewer colds.
Breast milk also contains properties that fight dangerous bacteria, as well as some of our society’s most dreaded and deadly diseases.
“When breast milk is ingested, oligosaccharides from the milk hang out in the gut and provide a shield from some bacterium, such as E. coli,” Sullivan said.
Breast milk also contains many cancer-fighting abilities she said.
“When alpha-lactalbumin, a protein in breast milk, reaches the digestive tract, it is unfolded by the acid that is present,” Sullivan said. “It prevents cancer cells from multiplying, then causes the others to virtually commit suicide.”
As more research is conducted, the use of breast milk for treating various adult diseases will likely become more common, Sullivan said.
