Posted on 06/22/2006 7:20:19 AM PDT by NRA1995
First they came for the workplace, then for people’s homes and cars, and then the great outdoors. Now the anti-tobacco jihadists, having helped ban smoking in most public and many private places, have turned their attention to the most private space of all — the womb.
John Banzhaf, the heavyweight George Washington University law professor who for years has led the anti-smoking brigade is setting his sights on fetal rights related to their smoking mums. While it is legally defensible to abort a fetus up until moments before birth, it is apparently inconceivable that a woman would expose her unborn child to the harmful effects of smoking.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
It sure is. :)
Freedom and independent thinking are doomed.
No surprise at all if one has been paying attention to these... FR rules forbid me from continuing.
The kids (FReepers under 40) don't believe you.
I second that motion!!
Ummmm, jump her and beat her down???
Or just take her name and address, and schedule her for the beating after she delivers.
Of course they don't believe me. God forbid that they would just open their minds and THINK !!!!!!!
I'm planning a trip to Denver this summer and they are going non-smoking on July 1. I am really pi**ed.
If I wasn't visiting my daughter I wouldn't go.
France is looking better and better to me. (I never thought I'd say that).
No,he isn't worth it but my God am I glad I had my kids when I did. !!!
We could do just about anything but gain weight. I was allowed 16 pounds so I smoked and drank a lot of black coffee to keep from eating ! LOL
I had five easy(?) deliveries and had five healthy kids.
Go figure.
This is actually an issue between the mother-to-be and her doctor. Whether it be weight gain, tobacco, alcohol or caffeine.
My OB was more concerned about my caffeine intake than anything and I hate decaf coffee. So we compromised, I could have 2 cups of regular coffee, but no other caffinated beverages. To this day I rarely ever have more than 2 cups of coffee. Smoking was mentioned only one time, and when I was going to my 20th reunion, she told me to go ahead and have a couple glasses of wine.......I was over 8 months pregnant :)
Even though you had your baby many years later than mine you were not caught up on the insanity of the day.
xxx ooo to your little one.
Thanks dear.
My little one is going to be 8 next week, and much of the insanity had begun....but my OB did not fall for much of it. She was an old school kind of gal and one of the best to be had where I used to live.
I have lots of friends in central Delaware that are now grandmothers, she had delivered their daughters, and is now delivering their granddaughters!!!
Excuse me, but since when did the placenta stop being the protective sack with that huge cord that protects the baby from outside toxins while in the womb?
When did the placenta lose it's powers? I'd sure like to know!
"...even when those mothers gave birth to crack addicted babies."
Couldn't agree with you more. I've rocked, cuddled and smooched many a crack and fetal alcohol syndrome baby over the years at my local hospital.
Smoking while pregnant will NEVER do that kind of damage. Hell, we all know that even the Second Hand Smoke argument is totally bogus! This is just another myth that the Nanny Staters will latch on to, to rid the world of smokers. (And I'm NOT a smoker.)
Man, I hate those Smoke Gnatzies!
Your "point" is only valid if the placenta is KNOWN to protect the fetus from ALL toxins. Since we know it does not, then it is a matter of science whether any particular toxin hurts a baby or not, and how much, and this knowledge will change, forever.
This means the definition of child abuse will change, forever, with the science. The effects of chemicals on a fetus, for example, are much better known now than they were 50 years ago. Cocaine ingestion while pregnant should now be a felony in each and every case; in fact, if you acept that a pregnant woman can, in theory, commit a crime of negligence by ingesting any substance, you have (I repeat myself) ALREADY ACCEPTED THE PRINCIPLE WHICH EVENTUALLY WILL MAKE TOBACCO USE WHILE PREGNANT A FORM OF CHILD ABUSE.
We're just arguing over when. Everybody on this thread has already crossed the logical line, whether you know it or not. You're just resenting the inevitable because of your personal addictions.
The same people who argue, as I do, that the State has no right to tell you whether or not you can smoke on private property around adults (and therefore all laws about bars and restaurants are illegal siezures) -- these same people should apply those same libertarian principles to conclude you have no right, as a parent, to assault your child with a substance known to be harmful. Children, by definition, cannot consent.
We can argue all day over whether or not second hand smoke is harmful, or whether or not tobacco substances cross the placenta, and I'm happy to sit at the sideline of that one and wait on the science to clarify, because when you enter that SCIENTIFIC argument you have ALREADY IMPLICITLY CONCEDED THE PRIOR POINT, that society has a right to ask the legislative question on the science. Otherwise, what dose it matter whether the placenta protects the fetus or not, if it is not a legitimate area for legislation?
So many arguments surrounding this issue are logically irrelevant, just like so many defenses of abortion are emotionally satisfying but logically spurious. It makes no difference, for example, if this or that person smoked while pregnant and produced a "healthy" child. Not only do you not know that, in fact, because you don't know what that child would have been like if that mother had not smoked, the story is a logically and scientifically irrelevant anecdote, just like the anecdotes about people who ate eggs for 100 years and dies with clean coronary arteries.
"Harm" is defined statistically.
That is the question, of course. And it by no means follows that if you can't give your baby nicotine you can't give your baby a hamburger. That level of argumentation is not serious. You ask that as if the question of where to draw the line should automatically lead to the conclusion that no line should be drawn.
This is simply a silly rhetorical (as opposed to a logical) defense for those who don't like where the line is being drawn.
As I said, this particular line will be re-drawn every generation as we understand more about what effects various things have on babies in the womb. So I don't know where, precisely, to draw it; I know it should lie somewhere in the gulf between cigarettes and hamburgers.
That is exactly what the medical profession told us. That the placenta protected the baby inside the womb from all outside toxin's. The cord filtered out all bad before it reached the blood stream of the baby.
Why is that so difficult to understand today? Are "some" people today refusing to believe that because they have their own agenda when it comes to an unborn baby?
You're just resenting the inevitable because of your personal addictions.
And you know how I feel about you calling my smoking an addiction, right? As if YOU aren't addicted to anything in this life! heh! Running? Working out at the gym? Pepsi? Oh sure, you are Mr Dried Up Prune who has no care about anything in this life, except to stomp on the rights of others. I guess that is what it is like to hate others just because they are happy.
I can't read anymore of what you write. You and I will NEVER agree to anything. Guess what? I could care less. Have a good life. Try to find some happiness within yourself, ok?
Boy, some of these geezers in here. ugh!
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