But one of the reasons I kept using during my first pregnancy was because, well, like, I always like to say if pregnancy was a cure for addiction, we could just go out and get all the female addicts pregnant, and, hey, no more addiction.
You know, I didn't want to drink, I didn't want to smoke cigarettes, I didn't want to really do anything while I was pregnant. BARR: Well, the crack baby myth hadn't been, you know, advertised as much as it was later on. And I wanted to ask, at the time, did you think about or was there any discussion about the effect that drug use might have on your babies? You continue to speak openly about having smoked base cocaine and having used drugs during your pregnancy. CARL BELL (Psychiatry and Public Health, University of Illinois at Chicago): Thank you. And I welcome you all and thank you all so much for speaking with us.ĭr. Carl Bell, a clinical professor of psychiatry and public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Nisa is about to go off to college.Īlso here to provide expertise is Dr. Mary is an activist who discusses her past crack cocaine use while pregnant with Nisa. Joining us are Mary Barr and her daughter Nisa Beceriklisoy.
And we're joined now by several people who know about this. But it turns out that children who are exposed to crack cocaine before birth are proving these worst case scenarios were all wrong. Two decades later, we're still learning about how drug and alcohol exposure by pregnant affects their children. John Silber, the former president of Boston University went so far as to say that "crack babies won't ever achieve the intellectual development to have consciousness of God," unquote. And if you think about it, that term tells you everything you need to know about the way children who are exposed to crack during the height of the epidemic were dismissed, demeaned and even feared.Īt the time there were all manner of pronouncements about how children who were exposed to crack in utero were destined to a life of physical and mental disability. Today we want to talk about so-called crack babies. That's where we talk about issues that we sometimes avoid, often because of shame or fear. That's my Can I Just Tell You commentary and that's in just a few minutes.īut, first, it's time to go behind closed doors. I'm Michel Martin and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News.Ĭoming up, I have a few thoughts about that aggressive immigration law in Arizona.
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