Читать книгу Lifespan Development - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 162

Prenatal development can be influenced by many contextual factors, including maternal consumption of over-the-counter (OTC), prescription, and recreational drugs; illness; environmental factors; and more. Sometimes a pregnant woman and her doctor must make a difficult choice between forgoing a needed prescription drug and putting the fetus at risk. In those cases, the woman and her doctor must weigh not just the benefits of the medication but also the potential harm from forgoing it compared with the risks to the fetus. Frequently, the risks are deemed as justified to protect the woman’s mental and physical health. And, in any case, a woman may not know she is pregnant until after the first few weeks of the embryonic stage are already past. Thus, in the real world, almost no pregnancy can be entirely free of exposure to teratogens. However, each year, about 97% of infants are born without defects (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017a).