Control

There is an article today in the Wisconsin State Journal about the "bevy of laws" being proposed or passed supposedly to protect a fetus from the actions of the women carrying the fetus. As you read through the article though, you begin to see what these laws are really about - controlling the lives of women.

The laws include everything from being able to arrest a woman for smoking during a pregnancy to being able to charge someone with two murders for killing a pregnant women instead of just one for killing the woman.

If these laws are not about controlling the lives of women, why aren't the supposed supporters of children talking about making it a crime for parents to smoke period? Why is a crime for a woman to smoke for the first nine months, but not a crime for the father and the mother to smoke in the house where that child is raised for the next eighteen years? What if just the father smokes in the home during the pregnancy? Why don't we arrest him since according to the surgeon general the debate on the dangers of secondhand smoke is over?

How about we arrest the couple that I saw at Rick and Ole's when smoking was allowed in bars here that had the infant carrier sitting on top of the bar in one of the smokiest establishments in town? Why is it more damaging to the child to take in the smoke in utero than breathing it directly?

The answer is that it's not but the person proposing the law to make it a crime for a pregnant woman to smoke in Arkansas is a man.