Smoke-Free Womb
Jacob Sullum | June 15, 2006, 11:31am
Remember Bob Mathis, the Arkansas legislator who wondered "whether it was 'constitutional' for a mother to smoke while pregnant"? John Banzhaf, executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, does not address the issue directly, but he is confident that it would be constitutional to prohibit pregnant women from smoking, as Mathis wants to do. An ASH press release informs us that "law professor John Banzhaf, who has successfully led a movement which has spread smoking bans outdoors, into private homes (in custody cases and where foster children live), into apartments (when neighbors complain), and into cars (when children are present), says expanding it into wombs would be constitutional....To those who argue that a ban on smoking by pregnant women would constitute an invasion of her constitutional right of privacy, Banzhaf notes that her so-called privacy rights are inextricably bound up with the right of the child not to be subjected to dangerous unnecessary health risks, if not death itself."
Having examined the slope on which Mathis' proposed ban lies, Banzhaf pronounces it unslippery: "To the concerns... that such a law would inevitably lead to restrictions on many other activities by pregnant women, Banzhaf notes that legislators can and do draw lines. The ban on TV advertising for cigarettes has not spread to other products, handguns--but not shotguns--are banned in certain situations, knives of one length but not another are often illegal, drinking is legal at age 21 but not at age 20, etc."
Maybe those clever legislators could give some line drawing lessons to Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who sounds ready to follow Mathis and Banzhaf into the womb:
"I haven't thought it through all together in terms of the legality of it," Huckabee said while meeting with reporters to announce a planned trip to Asia. "From a health standpoint, heck yeah, it makes sense."...
Huckabee said such a prohibition, if enacted, would probably have to cover other unhealthy activities such as drinking.
"There are a lot of things pregnant women shouldn't do. That's just one of them," Huckabee said. "The point is, if you're going to make that against the law you're probably going to have to extend it to all the other things that are equally unhealthy for the child."
Michael Siegel, one anti-smoking activist who is not joining Banzhaf's march into the uterus, has started a list of "other things": "drinking during pregnancy, unprotected sex during pregnancy, failure to take multi-vitamins with folate during pregnancy, changing cat litter during pregnancy, and eating too much salt while pregnant." He also notes that "the same argument used by ASH to defend this proposed law against the argument that it intrudes into the privacy rights of women could just as easily be used to outlaw abortion," which is a bit more hazardous to a fetus than Mom's cigarette habit.
[Thanks to Linda Stewart for the tip.]
anon2 | June 15, 2006, 2:49pm | #
crimethink,
You have debunked nothing. Life doesn't begin at birth. The unborn fetus is alive. Life can begin again, because scientists are clever and creating life from non-life is something I expect to see in my lifetime. I'm a "parts is parts" kind of guy, and I have "parts is parts" kids; one from my wife's material and mine, and two from a donor eggs and my material. All three were put together in a petri dish.
If you reread my post, you'll see that I already made the distinction between life and "a new life". It makes some sense to consider conception the beginning of a new life, although it also makes sense, in the case of in-vitro, to consider the actual selection of the sperm and the egg to be the beginning of a new life, or the implantation to be the beginning of the new life.
Selection of sperm and egg: the DNA are chosen
Conception: the DNA are combined
Implantation: the DNA is given a home where it can grow
Currently you can't have a kid without each of those three (and
many other) steps. Traditionally, selection of sperm and egg is done via a competition involving millions of participants, but that's no longer necessary.
None of the above changes my original point, which was you can damage the child that will be born by damaging the DNA before it's mixed just as you can damage the child that will be born by changing the environment of the fetus.
I don't begrudge you your religion. It may make you a better person than I, perhaps in this life because you're kinder and gentler, perhaps in the next life, where you'll spend eternity in comfort and I will spend eternity regretting not believing in the big guy and his desire to torment non-believers. Perhaps not. We disagree. That's fine. However, using religious certainty to decide matters of legislation is bad policy. Certain things happen at conception, but certain other things happen
before conception.
Julian Sanchez's comment at 1:16 says it better than I did. Or maybe not, since Jennifer's response suggests she's read it a different way than I did.
Pro Libertate,
I disagree. There is absolutely no need to draw the line between non-human and human. In fact, I believe looking for such a line is doomed to failure, because there is no single defining moment. Determining when to afford which set of cells what sorts of protection is a similar task, but it doesn't have the definitional baggage that your phrasing has.
Jennifer | June 15, 2006, 4:19pm | #
Just for the sake of getting around another, rather contentious, issue, let's assume that the fetus has developed to a point where most of us can agree that it's no longer just a lump of cells, and is now a "little person". Otherwise, we'll never get out of the muddy swamp of "is it a person?", which really is ancillary to the real issue of children being protected by the government from their parents' bad habits. What is our baseline here?
I tried responding earlier, Evan, but the server had other ideas. Assuming we're at the point where we all agree the fetus has the rights of a full-born human, I think a distinction needs to be made between
guaranteed harn and
possible harm. Same goes for post-birth kids, too.
Shooting your kid with a gun or shoving him off a cliff causes guaranteed harm. I agree those should be illegal. Putting cyanide or arsenic in your kid's food causes guaranteed harm. Those too should remain illegal.
But in terms of smoking around your kid, or when pregnant, we're talking about something that
might, possibly, increase the chance of harm, though on the other hand it might do nothing at all, and even if it DOES cause harm how can you prove it? As I said before, even if it can be proven beyond a doubt that I'd be a couple of inches taller if only my mother never smoked, is "being five-three instead of five-four" an actual harm that the law must prevent?
And where then do you draw the line for potential harmful behavior? Sometimes when I was a kid, like say on birthdays or vacations, my parents would let me eat a super-unhealthy meal, pizza or ice cream or cake. Maybe--just maybe--if you went back in time and replaced those fifty unhealthy meals with fresh fruits and broiled skinless chicken, I'd be slightly better off healthwise than I am now.
Maybe my IQ would be a couple of points higher if my mother had breast-fed me. Maybe I'd have more stamina today if she'd forced me to continue taking gymnastics lessons, rather than let me drop out after I told her I hated it.
Furthermore, if my mother hadn't drunk so much milk while she was carrying me, and forced me to drink so much of it as a kid, maybe I wouldn't be cursed with kidneys that have made enough calcium kidney stones to string a goddamned rosary. Trust me, guys: strong teeth are nice, but getting a cavity drilled and filled is FAR more enjoyable than having a kidney stone. So maybe I should sue my mother? I can't say for certain it's her fault, but since almost every adult health problem is traceable to mom's behavior I figure it's worth a shot.
Dawn | June 16, 2006, 9:51pm | #
"Michael Siegel, one anti-smoking activist who is not joining Banzhaf's march into the uterus, has started a list of "other things": "drinking during pregnancy, unprotected sex during pregnancy, failure to take multi-vitamins with folate during pregnancy, changing cat litter during pregnancy, and eating too much salt while pregnant."
He forgot eating certain types of cheeses/fish as well as taking up a new vigorous exercise program.
I'm pregnant and I take very good care of myself and my future child. I think the stress of harassment and incarceration is worse than a lot of things I could do all by myself. I would like to reiterate what I believe Michael Siegel is trying to say by asking who decides where it stops? My doctor said because I eat a healthy diet, vitamins aren't mandatory. My doctor and his staff are up on all the latest medical information and I've had every test commonly available and some that aren't so common. Causing pregnant women to be afraid to be honest with their health care professionals is not in the interest of public health. I believe women who are afraid of the added penalty will lie.
I have chosen to take vitamins, I have chosen to not smoke or drink and I've made several other choices concerning my health and my child's welfare that are the best choices for both of us. My husband supports my choices and has even made some changes and choices of his own. I don't need some cookie cutter health directive from the government that comes with the threat of incarceration and a criminal record if I don't follow it. If I see another pregnant women smoking or working in a smoky atmosphere, like a bar, I feel concern for her choices but I can't say I believe a law would make her situation any better. I may be pregnant too, but I haven't really walked in that other woman's shoes. Quitting smoking can be hard. Being pregnant can be stressful all on it's own. Why would anyone want to poke sticks at a women in this position? Maybe we should just stone her?
I think back to my own poor, divorced, pregnant, unemployed mother, WHO SMOKED and DRANK and was in denial that she was pregnant again by the man she was divorcing. Adding a criminal record to her lot wouldn't have helped my health and welfare as a baby one bit. And who the hell would take care of her other children while she was in jail? I'm in a much better situation than she was. I'm married, I'm having a first child in my 30's, I'm college educated, and I'm financially stable. The thought of becoming a parent is exciting. It's also stressful enough without the government intruding. The changes I made were rewarding and give a sense of self empowerment and responsibility. Passing laws that I must follow or risk going to jail, would take that away. People need to think for themselves and do for themselves. Passing laws that govern every thing we do takes that away.
How do you know who to prosecute? I can just see some over zealous official rounding up all the fat bellied woman he sees smoking and hauling them down to the station to be given pregnancy tests. When do you prosecute? Do you round up all the women who smoked a cigarette in a moment of weakness or before they knew they were pregnant? And don't tell me that they can be told that it starts from the moment she finds out she's pregnant. I can see women putting off prenatal care until they are sure they have quit. We already have teenagers hiding pregnancies from their parents because they are afraid of the punishment. Do we need to add women who smoke to the list of women out there hiding and in denial of their pregnancy?
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