When a pregnant women gets behind the wheel of a car, she's exposing herself
and her fetus to great peril, and I'm certain that most vehicular trips
taken by pregnant women are not medically indicated.  Society bears the
expense of this dangerous practice all the time.  There's never going to be
a way to eliminate all choices that increase risk: pregnant women drink from
plastic water bottles, live in heavily polluted regions, catch contagious
diseases by coming into contact with other people...  But we put a different
moral value on the taking of various risks that isn't always commensurate
with the amount of risk being taken.  Commuting 100 miles (161 km ;) ) a day
for 9 months is I would guess a much greater risk to a fetus than lighting
up one cigarette while pregnant, yet most would not bat an eyelash at the
commuter, while the single act of cigarette smoking would be
near-universally condemned.

There is always going to be a tension between individual rights and costs to
other individuals and society at large... we're all going to draw our lines
in different places and have different carrots and sticks to drive people to
avoid risk; my fervent wish is that we could apply rational risk assessment
and avoid the most risk possible for the efforts we can expend.  I trust
that *well-informed* people with no impairments to mental capacity will make
the best decisions they can about the risks they take on for themselves, for
their families and for society.  As a society, I think we should focus on
supporting the people who are able to make these decisions, and protecting
those who do not have the capacity.

-Rosemary McNaughton, LLLL
Northampton MA

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 12:21 PM, Kershaw Jane <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> So you support a woman's right to do drugs, etc and injure her fetus?  When
> society bears the expense of the treatment of an illness resulting from a
> known health risk, then society can and will make rules to reduce that
> expense.  I hope you are being tongue-in-cheek here!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lactation Information and Discussion [mailto:
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lara
> Sent: Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:08 AM
> Subject: Re: AAP and a woman's right to choose...
>
> g raphael <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>
> > What health practitioner or health agency would defend a woman's right
> > to smoke during pregnancy???
>
> I'm not sure if this is what you actuall mean, georgia, but I would
> absolutely 100% defend a woman's _right_ to smoke during pregnancy, just as
> I'd defend a woman's right not to breastfeed - no matter how much I might
> think it's a bad decision. If there were any moves to criminalise what a
> woman does with her body during pregnancy, I'd be first in line to chain
> myself to Parliament House in protest.
>
> I think it's very important to separate public health education messages
> from a rights-based discourse, _especially_ when it comes to pregnancy,
> reproduction, and women's bodies.
>
> Dr Lara Hopkins
>
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