Drugs and Children: Today's Sorrow and Tomorrow's Future

A young girl, at age 13, moves in with a 17 year old boy, with nobody to stop her, because her mother is ill and her father is a drug addict who cares only for himself. At age 17, this girl gives birth to a baby girl. The father and mother of the baby are drug addicts and the baby gets taken away. The young girl has to go into in-house drug rehabilitation, the father has to go to rehab weekly. The baby lives with her 82 year old grandmother until she's about 2 years old. By then, the young woman and her boyfriend finish rehab and get custody of their baby back. They move back in together, but it isn't long before the boyfriend starts doing drugs again and they split up. The young woman starts doing drugs again and the toddler is shuffled between them, another grandmother, and various babysitters. The state takes the baby away from them again. The young woman gets pregnant with another baby from a different man, and continues to do methamphetamines while pregnant, which causes the second baby to be born prematurely.

The hospital finds drugs in the baby's system and baby two is taken by the state also. The second baby's father gets full custody of the infant and the young woman doesn't straighten her act up completely until about 2 years later before she get's the toddler back and she never gets the infant back. During this two year interlude, the toddler is drugged by the state so she will stay calm while getting shuffled between foster homes and distant relatives. When the young woman gets this toddler back, she has already got a new boyfriend, and is, again, pregnant. This relationship is shaky and around the 8th month of her 3rd pregnancy, she finds out that this boyfriend is cheating on her. So, she leaves him, moves in with a friend, and shortly after that, her friend is calling the boyfriend and telling him that she kicked the young woman out because she caught her slamming dope up her arm. Keep in mind that she is still 8 months pregnant and has her first child with her, that she just won back custody of.

What is right about this true story? Nothing. Who is the victim in this story? If you say it's the children, then you're on the same wave length as me. I know that drugs can be a powerful anchor that's hard to remove from a life, but how can somebody not remove it when a beautiful baby is born into the world that you can call your own? Everything else in this young woman's life is negative, except for these babies. I was a very negative person before I had my son, but when he was born, there was nothing more wonderful than to be his mother. He changed my life into positives, and I still live for him. I never thought I would be a good mother, and I was pretty messed up before I became pregnant with him.

But the sun started shining brightly when he was born. Sure, it wasn't super easy to stay positive, but all I had to do is look at him and I fought for it; hard than anything I've ever done in my life. I think that people who choose drugs over their own children have no heart and are very selfish. They never grow up. They live for their own satisfaction and use anybody who tries to help them, and cry about how nobody cares about them and nobody knows how hard life is for them. How hard are the lives of these children they bring into the world and abuse, neglect, and torture through constant upheavals? That's what they need to ask, instead of being so focused on how they, as supposed adults, are being treated so cruelly. The government takes away these children, but doesn't do anything to stop the flow of more children from drug addicted parents in the social system. The government states that it is against a person's rights to be medically stopped from having children, but what about these children's rights? Don't they have a right to be cared for in a safe manner and not born into the world to be thrown away like so much trash? I'd like to see a few politicians who would challenge the government to protect these children's rights before worrying about the parents' rights. That would be justice for sure.