Sunday 29 March 2009

Moralizers' Two-Fer

Woo-hoo! Moralizers' delight! Smoking and pregnancy.
If you're a smoker and planning to get pregnant, there's good news and bad news.

First the good news: Australian researchers say women who stop smoking before 15 weeks of pregnancy cut their risk of giving birth prematurely and having small babies to the same level as non-smokers.

Now the bad: Women who don't quit by 15 weeks are three times as likely to give birth prematurely and twice as likely to have small babies, compared to women who stopped smoking.

Seems like a good research topic. Many pregnancies are not planned but welcome nonetheless. So, for smokers, this is some encouraging motivation to quit ASAP.

But have a look at some of the comments.

From RallyBoy:
I think it is a crime to smoke while pregnant and when you have kids. A person is knowingly endangering the life of a little baby and setting it up for a life-time of complications. This should be legal? When the health risk is FACT then a person should most definitely be held accountable. No different than driving without a seat belt or proper car seat for your child. It is a crime to hold a child captive in the womb while a person sits and pumps toxins into their body knowing bloody well what it is doing. If they don't know what it is doing then I'd say they don't have the mental capacity to have a child in the first place. I think the other points made in the comment above asking if we should dictate what a mother eats, etc. is just being silly. There is an obvious difference between those other points and smoking and drinking while pregnant. I'd like to think the poster is intelligent enough that I really don't need to sit here and list the major differences between smoking and drinking vs. exercise, eating and staying up late. Smoking and or drinking should be a crime while pregnant.

And Alley1800 agrees:
I completely agree!!! I think that smoking while pregnant or smoking around your kids at home or in the car should be considered a form of child abuse. Second hand smoke is just as toxic (if not more) as the smoke inhaled by the smoker. Women who smoke during pregnancy are just in denial or they just don't care enough about their child, and therefore should not be having a child in the first place!
I grew up in a smoke-filled household until I was about 13. It was just AWFUL. To this day I despise smokers and I actually have much less respect for them as people. I don't know how people can go around smelling like that 24/7. I know most of you smokers don't think that you smell because smoke is simply the air that you breathe and you are used to it, but just so you know, YOU REEK! And I know that it's none of my business what people are doing to their own health, but they are not only doing it to themselves, they are doing it to everyone around them. And just FYI for any smokers, when you smoke outside waiting for the bus or just outside a building at work, your smoke does NOT just disappear into the wind. It lingers around you and is very bothersome to the non-smokers around you.

Much more at the link.

Bonus: One of my favorite posts from Birth Pangs by Sleeping Sun who was pregnant at the time, 'Why Stop at Alcohol?'

1 comment:

deBeauxOs said...

Hello? I grew up in a familial environment where everyone was hooked on cigarettes except me. My mom pretty much smoked until the moment she died, but that didn't turn me into a deranged nicotine abolitionist.

Moderation and reciprocal civic responsibility works best; the knee-jerk banning or criminalizing of habits and addictions that many human beings enjoy and live with creates more problems than it solves.

Post a Comment