Indiana is 4th in the nation in terms of women who smoke while pregnant, trailing West Virginia, Missouri, and Montana. As a debt collector, it’s always a little frustrating when confronted with a smoker who can’t pay his or her debt. A pack-a-day habit is probably something like $125/month. But that’s just a financial matter where the people harmed are the smoker/debtor and the creditor.
I can only imagine the frustration of medical professionals confronted with pregnant women smoking. It’s a bad habit and a poor choice with cascading negative consequences for mother and future child. (It would be interesting to see where pro-life & pro-choice advocates fall on this particular issue and why – though, abortion is arguably a less pressing issue in that 17% of Hoosier pregnancies aren’t being terminated through abortion.)
The March of Dimes, which advocates for healthy babies, says if all pregnant women in the U.S. stopped smoking, there would be an estimated 11 percent reduction in stillbirths and a 5 percent reduction in newborn deaths. Babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are up to three times as likely to die from sudden infant death syndrome as babies of non-smokers, according to the March of Dimes.
Other effects are more common and better known: Smoking nearly doubles a woman’s risk of having a low-birth-weight baby, slows fetal growth and increases the risk of preterm delivery.
There are an interesting couple of paragraphs talking about why Indiana has such a high smoking rate. Dick Conklin, of Tobacco Free Allen County, says it has to do with economics, family tradition and a belief in a fundamental right to smoke. I’m not sure why poor people are more likely to smoke – it’s probably more of a correlation than a causation – but it’s really the “fundamental right” thing that drives me nuts. I suppose I have the right to jam a knitting needle into my eye, but I’m not going to do it. And the issue of whether there ought to be legislation to stop smoking is distinct from the issue of whether any given individual ought to smoke or, in particular, smoke while pregnant, knowing what we do today and have known for quite some time about the risks of smoking.
So what is the mindset? “I have the right to smoke, so I’m going to stick it to all you liberal nanny-staters by poisoning myself and my fetus?” More likely, I think the mindset is that the person is addicted, doesn’t want to deal with the hard work of giving up the addiction, and doesn’t want to confront the problem in their own minds, so through the magic of fuzzy thinking, the “right to smoke” somehow allows them to short-circuit that mental process.
Abortion is claiming about 10.5% of pregnancies (compare http://www.in.gov/isdh/reports/itp/2007/highlights.htm to http://www.in.gov/isdh/reports/natality/2007/highlights.htm ). I’d say a procedure 100% fatal to 10.5% is more than arguably more pressing than a behavior that is risky to 17%.
Where would pro-life and pro-[pick your euphemism} fit? That would be interesting, because there would be the red-family/blue-family phenomenon, with red tending to be poorer (hence prima facie likelier to smoke), more religious (I think that’s an accepted correlation) and more pro-life.
I suspect that “fundamental right to smoke” is a rationalization of addicts rather than a real reason. “Rights Talk” (see Mary Ann Glendon’t book by that title) is still trump.
As a researcher and one who analyses research reports, I am always amazed at the findings of the anti-smoking activists. If what you say is true about low birth weights etc, then how in the hell did our parents and grandparents have healthy children? And we even grew up sitting in the car or next to them as they smoked a carton or so a week, and yet none of us have any ill effects-emphysema lung cancer etc did not spike among us younger people–did it? These seem to be going down, which is contrary to our numbers in the population. Perhaps what really caused spikes in cancers and childbirth situations was all the nuclear testing, above ground, we did out west. And then all that nuclear fallout washed over us and our crops and our animals etc.
How many of your attorney friends smoke their cigars in their offices and homes? Smoke em if you get em.
Once again, maybe my cigar bar isn’t the problem when it comes to second hand smoke.
Are you saying that 83% of pregnancies are terminated through abortion? It is Monday, and my language comprehension might be lacking.
That’s a legitimate reading of what I wrote. But what I intended was that less than 17% were being aborted whereas 17% was the rate of pregnant smokers. But, that said, the 10.5% abortion rate Tipsy quoted was a lot higher than I would have guessed.
Were you one of those babies, Doug? Because you *still* can’t gain weight. Talk about long-lasting effects.
I never asked, but I assume so. I was born 6 weeks early. Mom says that the doctors cautioned her that there might be brain damage. Guess the jury’s still out.