‘The Most Pervasive Form of Child Abuse’

The woman’s hands close around the baby’s throat. Then she presses​—slowly strangling the baby. The defenseless infant struggles. Just in time the woman relaxes her grip. The baby gasps for air but survives the assault. Before long, the woman grabs the tiny throat again, starting the torture all over. Again she lets go and leaves the infant gasping . . .

WHAT you just read describes suffering like that experienced by an unborn child when abused by its smoking mother.

Lifelong Damage

An overstatement? Hardly. A New York Times article reports that increasing numbers of scientific studies show that a mother who smokes regularly may impose lifelong physical and mental handicaps upon her child. Some of these injuries, says the article, “are immediately apparent while others develop more slowly.”

In what way does a mother’s smoking affect the unborn child? Dr. William G. Cahan, an attending surgeon at the Memorial Sloan-​Kettering Cancer Center in the United States and author of the Times article, explains: “Within minutes each cigarette puff introduces carbon monoxide and nicotine into the maternal blood.” As the carbon monoxide reduces the blood’s ability to carry oxygen and the nicotine constricts the blood vessels in the placenta, “the unborn child is temporarily deprived of its normal amount of oxygen. If this deprivation is repeated often enough,” says surgeon Cahan, “it could irreparably damage the fetal brain, an organ uniquely sensitive to a lack of oxygen.”

One study, for instance, revealed that five minutes after pregnant women smoked only two cigarettes, their fetuses showed signs of distress​—accelerated heart rate accompanied by abnormal breathinglike movements.

Pack-a-Day Smokers

What, then, are the implications for an unborn child if its mother smokes 20 cigarettes, or one pack, a day? Dr. Cahan figures that an average smoker inhales five puffs per cigarette. Thus, a pack-a-day habit amounts to a hundred puffs a day. With pregnancy lasting for about 270 days, the mother subjects the fetus “to at least 27,000 physical-​chemical insults.”

Such abused babies may pay a lifelong price for their mother’s tobacco habit. Besides physical problems, says Dr. Cahan, the children may have “behavioral problems, impaired reading abilities, hyperactivity and mental retardation.” Not surprisingly, he asks: “What responsible woman can persist in a habit so threatening to her young?”

In addition, smoking parents are also a threat to growing children. Why? The booklet Facts and Figures on Smoking, published by the American Cancer Society, answers: “Children of smokers have more respiratory illnesses than those of nonsmokers, including an increase in the frequency of bronchitis and pneumonia early in life.”

Dr. Cahan therefore concludes that “this form of child abuse may be the most pervasive of all.” The question is, Do you avoid it?