French fashion brand Balenciaga apologized Tuesday after facing backlash over a recent advertisement that showed young children holding teddy bear purses dressed in bondage attire.

The brand, which celebrities like Kim Kardashian often wear, displayed images on its website earlier this week as part of its “Toy Stories” campaign. The images showed child models posing with the brand’s teddy bear handbags, with the bears dressed in BDSM gear from its Paris Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2023 collection.

“We sincerely apologize for any offense our holiday campaign may have caused,” the company wrote in its Instagram story. “Our plush bear bags should not have been featured with children in this campaign. We have immediately removed the campaign from all platforms.”

Balenciaga debuted the handbag line last October at the runway show in Paris, where models walked the catwalk with bruised faces and bloody noses carrying the teddy bears.

Social media users erupted in outrage on Monday over the fashion brand’s latest advertisement, which showed plush toys dressed in BDSM gear, including fishnet tops, studded leather harnesses, and collars with locks, according to The Independent.

Landon Starbuck, the founder of the non-profit Freedom Forever, which advocates protecting children from abuse, trafficking, and exploitation, called the campaign “absolutely demonic.”

“Balenciaga is fetishizing children by having them model with sexual BDSM paraphernalia,” Starbuck wrote on Twitter. “They’re participating in a bigger campaign making it fashionable to destroy the innocence of children.”

This is absolutely demonic. Balenciaga is fetishizing children by having them model with sexual bdsm paraphernalia. They’re participating in a bigger campaign, making it fashionable to destroy the innocence of children. pic.twitter.com/CAXMQTMpri

— Landon Starbuck (@LandonStarbuck) November 21, 2022

According to The Independent, in one of the images are documents from a 2008 Supreme Court opinion, United States vs. Williams — a federal statute prohibiting the “pandering” of child pornography, which reaffirmed the PROTECT Act, a federal law that increased penalties for sexual exploitation and other abuse of children.

Although some on social media believe the documents were from the 2002 Supreme Court case Ashcroft vs. Free Speech Coalition, in which justices struck down a portion of the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996 that allowed virtual child pornography to be considered protected speech.

Balenciaga further apologized for including the court documents in the campaign.

“We apologize for displaying unsettling documents in our campaign,” the company said. “We take this matter very seriously and are taking legal action against the parties responsible for creating the set and including unapproved items for our Spring ’23 campaign photoshoot.”

“We strongly condemn the abuse of children in any form,” they continued. “We stand for children safety and well-being.”

Starbuck, who further condemned the company for “parading it in our faces,” in reference to the documents, told The Daily Wire that her non-profit is putting out a call to action in response to Balenciaga’s apology.

“We’re calling not just on Balenciaga but on their parent group Kering to provide the public with appropriate accountability,” she said. “The scope and seriousness of these images can’t be reduced to a mere oversight issue or to a set design flaw. We demand that every person involved in these horrible decisions from conception to fruition be held accountable, fired, and named so that potential future employers know to never allow them to work with children again.”

“We also demand that the entire Kering group and it’s fashion subgroups (Balenciaga, Gucci, etc.) receive [Child Sex Abuse] informed prevention education taught by Survivor Experts to educate on grooming, sexual exploitation prevention and to help create a new workplace standard,” she added.

While many pregnant women generally know of the risks involving drinking alcohol while pregnant, a new study is shedding light on the effect that even a small amount of the substance can have on a developing baby’s brain.

A recent MRI study showed that even minor to moderate amounts of drinking alcohol during pregnancy can alter a baby’s brain structure and postpone brain development. Drinking alcohol during pregnancy can open up the growing fetus to fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASDs).

If a baby is exposed to alcohol in utero, he or she can go on to have a scope of these FASD symptoms, such as learning disabilities, language and speech delays, problems seeing or hearing, heart, bone, and kidney issues, as well as physical limitations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“It might be a very small risk associated with every glass you might drink during pregnancy, but you never know if that may be the one that pushes you over the edge,” co-author Dr. Marlene Stuempflen told Insider.

In the study, scientists looked at fetal MRI scans of 24 unborn babies who had been exposed to alcohol while in utero. When the MRIs were conducted, the babies’ gestational ages were 22 to 36 weeks. Mothers submitted anonymous answers to questions about alcohol in order to reveal the babies’ exposure to alcohol. 

“Seventeen of 24 mothers drank alcohol relatively infrequently, with average alcohol consumption of less than one alcoholic drink per week,” lead author Patric Kienast said. “Nevertheless, we were able to detect significant changes in these fetuses based on prenatal MRI.”

Three of the mothers said they had one to three drinks each week, two said they consumed four to six drinks each week, and one said she drink an average of at least 14 drinks each week. Six of them also said they engaged in binge drinking alcohol at least once while they were pregnant, which is defined in a press release as more than four drinks in one instance.

“We found the greatest changes in the temporal brain region and STS,” the study’s senior author Gregor Kasprian, said. “We know that this region, and specifically the formation of the STS, has a great influence on language development during childhood.”

In the fetuses who had been exposed to alcohol, their “fetal total maturation score (fTMS) was significantly lower than in the age-matched controls, and the right superior temporal sulcus (STS) was shallower,” the press release noted. “The STS is involved in social cognition, audiovisual integration and language perception.”

While it’s not clear how the babies will be impacted once they are born, Kienast said “we can strongly assume that the changes we discovered contribute to the cognitive and behavioral difficulties that may occur during childhood.”

“Pregnant women should strictly avoid alcohol consumption,” Kienast added. “As we show in our study, even low levels of alcohol consumption can lead to structural changes in brain development and delayed brain maturation.”

The CDC noted that there was no difference in how many pregnant women said they drank alcohol in 2019 and 2020, but in both years, around 14% to 15% of pregnant women said they drank alcohol and around 6% said they had engaged in binge drinking.

“Unfortunately, many pregnant women are unaware of the influence of alcohol on the fetus during pregnancy,” Kienast noted. “Therefore, it is our responsibility not only to do the research but also to actively educate the public about the effects of alcohol on the fetus.”

The study’s findings will be presented at the Radiological Society of North America’s annual meeting next week and have not been published yet.