One of the  unique features of the English legal system is the fact that our laws are made not just by  act of Parliament but also by precedent established in the higher courts – case law. Occasionally a precedent is set that captures not only the attention of lawyers but the country as a whole and one such case will shortly be heard by the Court of Appeal.

A local authority is taking a woman to court to try to prove that she committed a criminal act by drinking alcohol during pregnancy, thus causing brain damage to her daughter, now aged six and in foster care. The authority alleges that the woman, repeatedly warned of the risks to her unborn child, chose to drink alcohol excessively throughout her pregnancy.

If the local authority are successful then it will be a crime for any woman to knowingly damage an unborn child through the consumption of alcohol during pregnancy. This will no doubt generate a storm of controversy (what if the woman is an alcoholic, for example?) and women’s rights campaigners have already voiced their objections. However, experts say that as many as 7,000 babies a year are born mentally or physically damaged through their mothers drinking alcohol during pregnancy so, irrespective of the moral arguments and the difficulties in policing such a law, something clearly needs to be done.

Doctors have been warning for years about the (surely obvious) downsides of women drinking alcohol excessively or smoking whilst pregnant and nobody of sound mind could possibly claim to be unaware of the risks of such irresponsible and dangerous behaviour. Perhaps if that behaviour is deemed criminal it may well go some way to alleviating the problem.