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In contemporary American political discourse, "crack babies" have been treated as filius nullius-as if they had no biological fathers. With no link between fathers and fetuses, no inheritance of harm could be attributed to the father's use of drugs. The absence of fathers in debates over drug addiction and fetal harm has had profound consequences for women, for it has dictated that women alone bear the burden and blame for the production of "crack babies."
Since at least the late 1980s, and in some cases far earlier, studies have shown a clear link between paternal exposures to drugs, alcohol, smoking, environmental and occupational toxins, and fetal health problems. Yet men have been spared the retribution aimed at women. In fact, while women are targeted as the primary source of fetal health problems, reports of male reproductive harm often place sperm at the center of discourse as the "littlest ones" victimized by reproductive toxins, somehow without involving their male makers as responsible agents.
Scientific research linking reproductive toxins to fetal health problems reflects deeply embedded assumptions about men's and women's relation to reproductive biology. Critical analysis of the nature of fetal risks thus requires not only that the biology of risk be examined but that the "collective consciousness" that shapes scientific inquiry on gender difference be assessed. As Evelyn Fox Keller states, this consciousness is constituted by "a set of beliefs given existence by language rather than by bodies" (1992, 25). Debates over fetal risk are not so much about the prevention of fetal harm as they are about the social production of truth about the nature of men's and women's relation to reproduction.
Challenging the science and politics of fetal harm requires deconstructing the three symbols that constitute debate over fetal health risks: the "crack baby," "pregnant addict," and "absent father." These symbols "frame" political debate about addiction and fetal health, providing the lens through which science is developed and policy is made. As Kathy Ferguson has said of this process of framing, "The questions we can ask about the world are enabled, and other questions disabled, by the frame that orders the questioning. When we are busy arguing about the questions that appear within a certain frame, the frame itself becomes invisible; we become...