The issue of drug abuse in pregnant women has remained relevant over recent years. Indeed, several policies have been proposed to tackle the problem, namely financial support for therapy, voluntary sterilization, and criminal persecution. However, the effectiveness of the proposed measures differs in their ability to achieve the desired outcome, the financial costs these measures entail, and the possibility to serve a large number of people. Applying Collins’s five criteria model, it has been found that while therapy policy may be costly in execution, it allows to embrace the largest number of women and is the most effective one in terms of reaching the desired outcome.
According to Collins (2005), five criteria should be applied during treatment evaluation: relevance, progress, efficiency, effectiveness, and impact. Out of the three policies considered, only financial support for therapy and voluntary sterilization policies allow to achieve positive outcomes. Thus, financial support for therapy allows combatting drug addiction and, at the same time, significantly reduce the number of infants born with low birth weight, thus diminishing infant mortality rate (Minozzi et al., 2020). Voluntary sterilization, while it is not instrumental in combatting drug abuse, still helps to avoid giving birth to children with health disparities. Criminal persecution, vice versa, does not reach any desired aims, since it prevents women from seeking help and effectively managing their opioid use disorder.
In terms of cost-effectiveness, voluntary sterilization is the cheapest option. Being an irreversible procedure, it solves the problem of having unwanted children for mothers with opioid use disorder effectively. However, the procedure does nothing in terms of disorder treatment. Criminal persecution presupposes unnecessary expenses since, instead of offering help to pregnant women, the system of prosecution makes them shy away from any governmental services, thus subjecting their unborn babies to higher risks (Faherty et al., 2019). Financial support for therapy is the most cost-effective policy since it acts on two planes. First, it helps to reduce the number of children born with serious health disparities, the subsequent treatment, and rehabilitation of whom is much costlier than the treatment of pregnant women with opioid disorders (Minozzi et al., 2020). Secondly, the treatment of women allows for further integration into society so that they can contribute to its development through taxation.
Moreover, financial support for therapy policy allows to embrace the largest number of women since this policy is beneficial for the mother-to-be and the unborn baby as well. As a rule, women are willing to take free medication in the hope that the proposed treatment is effective and they can lead a normal life. Voluntary sterilization policy allows reaching only a limited number of women due to the irreversible character of the procedure. Many drug-taking women, though they understand their predicament, still desire to get cured and have a family and babies in the future (Lalonde, 2018). That is why many of them are unwilling to undergo the procedure. Finally, the criminal persecution policy makes pregnant women with disorders shy away from any governmental or medical services, thus disguising the problem and not solving it. This policy has the lowest number of people it can effectively serve.
On comparison of financial support for therapy, voluntary sterilization and criminal persecution policies in terms of their correspondence to Collins’s five criteria model, it has been found that support for therapy suggestion is the best option. This policy has been found to be the most cost-effective one since it allows simultaneously benefitting the mother-to-be and her unborn child. Moreover, the money spend on treatment is likely to return through taxation when two people – the mother and her child – are integrated into society. The financial support for treatment policy also allows serving the largest number of people, since it does not have adverse effects that voluntary sterilization and criminal persecution policies entail.
References
Collins, T. (2005). Health policy analysis: A simple tool for policy makers. Public Health, 119(3), 192-196. Web.
Faherty, L. J., Kranz, A. M., Russell-Fritch, J., Patrick, S. W., Cantor, J., & Stein, B. D. (2019). Association of punitive and reporting state policies related to substance use in pregnancy with rates of neonatal abstinence syndrome. JAMA Network Open, 2(11), e1914078. Web.
Lalonde D. (2018). Regret, shame, and denials of women’s voluntary sterilization. Bioethics, 32(5), 281–288. Web.
Minozzi, S., Amato, L., Jahanfar, S., Bellisario, C., Ferri, M., & Davoli, M. (2020). Maintenance agonist treatments for opiate-dependent pregnant women. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews.