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!
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.