I couldn’t help but do an about-face and not-so-subtly stare this past weekend when I caught a glimpse of a pregnant woman lighting up. I’m no obstetrician, but to say the twenty-something woman was at least eight months pregnant wouldn’t be an unreasonable claim.
Passersby were, for the most part, paying no attention to her existence, let alone her chosen activity. There were, however, a small handful whose necks turned as though they were periscopes.
Two ladies in their forties looked at the smoking woman before looking at each other and rolling their eyes. One man asked the smoker for a light: she obliged. Another woman spared no time in approaching the smoker and saying, “You shouldn’t be poisoning your baby.”
“Mind your own f**king business, c**t,” she replied.
The interlocutor stormed off, muttering, “You should be in jail.”
We’ve all seen the graphic warning labels that adorn cigarette packages, and I’d venture to say it falls into the place of common knowledge that smoking while pregnant isn’t a health-conscious decision for the unborn, but I know that many children of mothers who smoked during pregnancy are born completely healthy.
The question is not whether the unborn child is being exposed to undue risk of harm as much as it is a question of whether or not it’s the mother’s right to inflict such harm.
Not long ago, I witnessed a father spank his unruly son in a store as most fellow Wal-Mart shoppers looked on disapprovingly. Not necessarily being an opponent of spanking myself, I carried on, paying no attention to the aisle-side punishment. His choice, not mine. Now, had I seen that same father laying a beating on his son, it would have been a different story.
On the spectrum of parental choice, is smoking whilst pregnant closer to a spank or a beating?
In an era where public health warnings, government agencies, environmental activists and anyone with a megaphone are attempting to eliminate choice for members of society, the resulting effect is that mere lifestyle differences are looked down upon in favor of a uniform, morally absolute way of living. It’s the age of the busybody.
When children are involved, it’s understandably a different ballgame. Styles of child-rearing contrary to the new norm of parenthood, such as spanking, are seen as barbaric to many.
Today, perhaps, it is acceptable to tell a pregnant woman to butt out (setting aside the reality that she is likely aware and indifferent to the risks) but what’s next? Will it become reasonable for a perfect stranger to chastise a young mother for formula feeding instead of breastfeeding or for clothing her baby in white after Labor Day?
The need for society to protect its vulnerable is just as important as the need for society to protect the freedom of choice for its members.
If you stumble across a pregnant woman smoking, is it your responsibility to confront her, or her right to be left alone?
That is a tough one. The closet libertarian in me says “mind your own f#%@$%g business C^%T”. But the bleeding heart in me says she is infringing on another life. The problem with the smoking/spanking analogy is that while you control the severity of the punishment whilst spanking, you are playing Russian Roulette when you smoke. You can press the gun to your head and five times out of six nothing will happen, but on that sixth time….BANG. In the end though I think the right of the child to have the best shot at health supersedes the mother’s desire for a nicotine fix
Yes it is her right. However, it is also stupid and irresponsible. Unfortunately most people who smoke also had parents who smoked. So the baby will likely end up smoking when it gets older. The damage done in pregnancy will pale in comparison to the damage done while growing up.
What we really need to do is license parenthood. After all, we license far less serious items, including cats and dogs and animal breeding. Unfortunately I suspect that society will never accept such a notion – that being a parent takes more than unprotected sex.
Part of the problem is that there is no generally accepted definition of what it means to be a good parent, And even if you could pass a test, that still doesn’t mean you can actually do it in real life – although it would improve the odds.
China adopted a one-child per family policy to halt their runaway population growth. A progressive licensing system, with ever stricter requirements after each child, could achieve the same results without the arbitrary limitation. However, it would be even harder to sell than a simple license.
Still, we need to control our population while raising the children we do have to the best of our ability. As this woman illustrates, uncontrolled fecundity is not a very good answer.
The scientific evidence clearly shows that prenatal nicotine exposure has detrimental affects on development early and late in life. For evidence on this simply search in http://www.pubmed.com “nicotine pregnancy”, there are 1652 article written on the topic.
Now, I believe smoking should be banned completely, especially in any society that has a publicly funded health care system,I will, however, accept the fact that people reserve the right to smoke, drink alcohol etc. However, when it comes to pregnant women or expecting fathers, they have absolutely no right to smoke. At no point in a childs life does a parent “have the right” to illicit harm. They also do not have the right to illicit harm during the prenatal life of the child.
This is not some pseudo science put out by the anti-tobacco agencies. It is a fact, smoking during pregnancy has permanent detrimental harm on babies. In situations where it is clearly harmful a parent should not have the right to knowingly illicit harm.
correction: the only time a parent has the right to illicit harm to a child is under religious discourse. E.g refusing cancer treatments due to religious ideologies. So unless it is in the parents religion for them to smoke then they should have no right to harm their child pre or post natal.