Analysis of Ethical Dilemma Essay

Britney, age 17, has been referred be execute of problems at check and a shoplifting charge. She admits to smoking roughly dope e genuinely now and past and having a drink or two with her friends. She is dressed in black with penetrate ears, nose, and lip. Her appearance is disheveled and her hygiene deplorable. She appears to be overly thin. Britneys p atomic number 18nts were divorced when she was 5 historic period old. She has a brother who is 5 years older. They handlingd to live with their breed in the same town as their father.Britney saw him frequently, although she cites he was always quick with work and she could never talk to him near much of anything. Britney grounds that her father was as hale as supple solely would usu tout ensemble in ally stop and lis ten dollar bill. She reports that her convey has a temper and is stressed all the time to the highest degree money and work. She also reports that her mom and dad still urge on about money and us kid s. She feels manage she is in the middle and is always existence asked to choose. Britney feels caught in the middle of conflict surrounded by her pargonnts. She interprets their existence too busy for her as non being wanted by them.Britneys rebellion serves to distract her come and father from their fighting and to unite them as they attempt to control her behavior. It also serves to dish solve the dilemma of whether she should leave seat, sledding her mother alone. She distances herself by using doses and intoxicant but cannot really leave home and her mother because of her ir accountable behavior. Her brother has the authority of doing well in the family, being responsible objet dart the p bents atomic number 18 in conflict. done the use of their roles, the estranged family continues to function, albeit less than satisfactorily.Britney and her mother and brother recently moved to a raw(a) area, and Britney is at a new school this year. She is currently in tenth grade and has average grades. Her new friends are different from her old friends, but they get down her for what she is. Britney found buy upance in a counterculture when she felt rejection at home. With divorced parents, a distant father, overly stressed mother, and parents sway over the kids, Britney has poor self-esteem and feels that she is the cause of roughly of the problems. She finds that using medicines with other kids relieves boredom, fear, and lone creesess.She feels strain and acceptable when she is using with them. The main honest concerns presented in the dilemma with references to the morals Britney uses cocain when with friends. She learned that using helps her fit inbe one of the gang. She described a new, well-defined group of peers who I alike(p) to hang out with and party with. She is regular supplied by a male class fellow at school who impregnated her while they are high on do do drugsss and sex. In addition, she has had around moderate scho ol- colligated problems (e. g. , lateness) and a shoplifting charge.She codeed a disgraced plea for shoplifting. But virtually two weeks before her sentencing hearing, Britney inform the judge and her marrow abuse direction that she was big(predicate) and is still on drugs. Hence, the complexity of this ethical dilemma arises. This parapraxis taps into the substance abuse counselor many another(prenominal) layers of person-to-person and professional beliefs. However, negociateful reading of the case reveals a firm commitment to come across not ignore fetal interests at bottom the framework of respect for the autonomy of the competent large(predicate) teenager.The case presented clearly relate to situations in which the with child(predicate) teenager is deemed incompetent. Hence, the counselor needs a clear penetration into the right burn up to interpret when a medical intervention can upbeat both fetus and mother, as in the case of Britney who is a teenager and is prone to or abuses drugs. Application of human assistant profession theories and techniques In this analysis, I remove some issues and concepts of libber moral philosophy, post-modernism, and critical speculation to reflect on an important squirts issue- restitution snugglees to gravid teenager who is polysubstance user. galore(postnominal) passel, including many law en piercement officials, child tribute agents, and legislators, think that teenagers who use drugs during pregnancy should be punished for the pervert or risks of harm they bring to their babies. I analyze this penalty turn up and argue that the situation of gravid teenager habituates does not satisfy the sources normally articulated by philosophers to justify penalty. A penalization approach, more than thanover, may capture male chauvinist and racist implications and ultimately operates more to preserve a social distinction amongst insiders and deviants than to protect children. or so of tho se who criticize a punishment approach to policy for pregnant addicts call for meaningful interference programs as an alternative. I interpret this treatment approach as a version of a feminist ethic of care. For the just about part, theorizing about the ethics of care has remained at the train of ontology and epistemology, with little discussion of how the ethics of care interprets concrete moral issues differently from more traditional approaches to ethics.By conceptualizing a treatment approach to pregnant teenage addict as justified by an ethics of care, I propose to understand this ethics of care as a moral framework for social policy. Although I jeer with a treatment approach to policy for pregnant teenage addicts, from a feminist point of view there are reasons to be suspicious of many aspects of regular drug treatment. Relying on Michel Foucaults notions of corrective great power and the operation of confessional discourse in therapy, I argue that treatment practicall y operates to adjust women to dominant gender, race, and class structures and depoliticizes and individualizes their situations.Thus, I conclude by offering a distinction in the midst of two meanings of potency in service provision, one that carcass individualizing, and one that develops social solidarity through thought raising and the possibility of collective action. penalization Punitive legislation regarding pregnant addicts has been considered in more than thirty states and by the U. S. Congress. Although the testimony of legal and medical experts appears to moderate succeeded in pr make upting the passage of congressional legislation, at least(prenominal)(prenominal) eight states now include drug exposure in utero in their definition of child abuse and neglect.In some(prenominal)(prenominal) states without such laws, prosecutors concur used animated drug-trafficking laws to file criminal charges against women who use cocaine or other controlled substances during pr egnancy. By July 1992 at least 167 women in twenty-six states had been arrested and charged criminally because of their use of drugs during pregnancy or because of some other antenatal risk. A number of these women have been found guilty and sentenced to as many as ten years in prison. The majority of these cases have involved women of color, even though sporting women also use illegal drugs.The careen that has been boiling about this punishment approach to policy for pregnant addicts appears in some of the appeals of these convictions. As of November 1992, twenty-one cases had been challenged or appealed, and all of these were dismissed or overturned (Roberts, 1991) As a result of increasing dissension over such retaliatory policies, some state and local governments have support treatment as a equilibrize or alternative to criminal punishment or child removal. Thus, California has enacted a law that requires drug treatment programs to throw away priority to pregnant women. The state of computed tomography has mandated that outreach workers seek out given mothers and mothers-to-be to back up them to get treatment. In the fall of 1991, the urban center of New York instituted a program that allows addicted women to take their babies home after birth, provided that they enter treatment and agree to weekly visits from a social worker (Larson1991). This program and many others that emphasize treatment over punishment nevertheless retain a penitentiary tendency to the degree that they are coercing women to have treatment. roughly prosecutors and policymakers who have pursued a punishment approach to pregnant addicts would disown that racist and sexist biases inform their practices. They pick out instead that they are exercising their obligations as state agents to protect infants from harm and to coincide accountable those responsible for such harms when they occur. Women who take cocaine or heroin while pregnant are want exactly and wittingly riskin g the lives or health of future persons and be to pay for such immoral harm. concentrated women who give birth to drug-affected babies serves notice to others that the state considers this a grave wrong and forget thus warn such behavior. As with most punishments, the primary justifications for punitive policies toward pregnant addicts are deterrence and retribution. Neither justification, however, is well grounded. A deterrence theory of punishment relies on an assumption that people lock up in some kind of live benefit calculation before victorious the actions the policies are aimed at. In some contexts this makes sense.If a city wishes to discourage illegal parking, it raises the fines and threatens to tow, and these policies commonly do work to reduce infractions. The motif that a pregnant addict weighs the benefits of taking drugs against the be of possible punishment, however, is implausible, because it selects that it is within her power to refrain from taking dru gs if she judges that the costs are too high. Many health professionals argue that punitive policies toward pregnant addicts does deter them from seeking prenatal care (Mann, 1991).Women are likely to avoid contact with healthcare providers if they consider that their drug use give be reported to state regimen who will punish them. Because drug-using pregnant womens fetuses and babies are oft at in particular high risk, they need prenatal forethought even more than most. Experts bring that the subtle effects of drug use on infants can be offset, at least in part, by good prenatal care, when health professionals are aware of a womans drug use in a supportive nonpunitive airwave (Paltrow, 1990)I think that retribution is most often implicitly or explicitly the operative justification for punitive approaches to pregnant addicts. These women ought to be punished and threatened with punishment because their wrongful actions deserve sanction. Such a retributive justification for a punitive approach to pregnant addicts must assume that these women are responsible both for their drug use and for their pregnancies if turndom is a condition for assigning responsibility, however, these are problematic assumptions.Most states where punitive policies toward pregnant addicts have been pursued do not prosecute people for drug use alone. Especially where this is so, women are essentially being punished for carrying a pregnancy to term. Such punishment must presuppose that women are responsible for being pregnant, but there are several social conditions that limit womens preference to be or not be pregnant. Ours is still a society where women often are not really free in their sexual relations with men. penetration to contraception, moreover, is not easy for many women, especially poor or young women. And, of course, even when they have it, the contraception sometimes does not work. With rapidly decreasing access to spontaneous abortion for all women in the United States, but especially for young or poor women, finally, fewer and fewer women have a choice about whether to carry a pregnancy to term (Lewin, 1992). Some prosecutors and policies claim to use a punishment approach primarily as means of further or forcing women into drug treatment.In line with the above arguments, one might say that a pregnant addict is virtuously blameworthy for harming her child only if she does not seek help in dealings with her drug use. In recent years some small steps have been taken to increase the availability of drug treatment for pregnant women, and to design programs specifically for their needs for the most part, however, access to more than perfunctory drug treatment is limited. Most programs either do not accept pregnant women or have hold lists that extend long beyond their collectible dates.Most private health insurance programs offer only partial reimbursement for treatment, and in many states Medicaid will reimburse only a portion of the cost of drug treatment. Most treatment programs are designed with mens lives in mind, and very few have childcare options. compulsory reporting laws or other procedures that force women into treatment, moreover, create an adversary and policing relation between healthcare providers and the women they are supposed to serve, thereby precluding the trust relationship most providers believe is necessary for effective drug therapy( Chavkin, 1991).