To judge this woman?

[moralberyll]

Leaving the local maternity unit today and a heavily pregnant woman who is obviously a patient as she was wearing a dressing gown, slippers and pyjamas was standing right near the doorway smoking a cigarette, there is a big sign up saying 'no smoking on campus'. Aibu to judge her that she is not only putting her own baby at risk but she wants to put other people's baby's at risk from secondhand smoke as well? I would definitely have said something if i were leaving the unit with my newborn baby!

Any health related institution which allows smoking will get no end of complaints about it - how can they actually justify it when people ask why they're allowing something with known health risks to themselves and others?

Which is all reasonable of course but I believe that secure mental health wards are unique in this respect. Patients who are detained literally cannot go off the ward (or grounds) without leave. Mental health wards try to be as unrestrictive as possible and all I know of had outdoor areas specifically for patients who smoke. As you can imagine it can be incredibly stressful being locked up against your will for being ill without throwing this on top. To pre-empt the drug/alcohol argument... it is quite unusual for somebody who is addicted to drugs and/or alcohol to be detained as the effect of drug and alcohol use mean it's difficult to establish if the person can be legally detained.

Restrictions placed on patients should as limited as possible. Any restriction you place on somebody should be looked at in the context of the freedoms of the general population.

Inmates? Really? I think the word you are looking for is patients

I was thinking of prisons. Smoking is going to be banned there too. I had been reading an article about that in The Telegraph and that was the expression they used- shoot me now.

I'm not going to lose sleep over it in that context - particularly when the person telling me off thinks smoking is fine and dandy when pregnant and tough luck for employees who have to put up with it.

I have no idea what your philosophical reply is supposed to mean. You know perfectly well the actual physical consequences of breaking this social code will be entirely self- inflicted.

If you are really interested (as opposed to being obtuse) I suggest you read the book "Irrationality: The Enemy Within" which has a really interesting (and terrifying) chapter on conformity. It's been a while since I read it but iirc the most convincing argument is that it is an evolutionary thing

What a load of pretentious nonsense. Oh your poor put upon smokers.

Still your "obtuse" comment certainly confirms my prejudices about the type of person who smokes when pregnant.

particularly when the person telling me off thinks smoking is fine and dandy when pregnant and tough luck for employees who have to put up with it

Loads of employees have to put up with it. Why should those working on MH wards be exempt just because the people they are caring for don't have a choice? You realise I am talking about outside smoking areas?

Anyway, I am going to go no further with this particular issue now as it's my bug bear and I don't want to derail (further).

I have no idea what your philosophical reply is supposed to mean. You know perfectly well the actual physical consequences of breaking this social code will be entirely self- inflicted

You know perfectly well that people see breaking social norms as a risk even when there are no consequences outside of our own imagination so I am not sure what reply you expected. "Gosh you are right, I am going to stop wearing a bra and combing my hair!!"?

Still your "obtuse" comment certainly confirms my prejudices about the type of person who smokes when pregnant

I'm not surprised, we learned that word in my pregnant smokers group. It's how we all talk.

What a pity you didn't learn about the harm smoking does to babies.

This is still rumbling on I see.
As stated earlier, I smoked, my mother smoked, her mother smoked, so did great gran.

All fine births with great weights. Mother lived until 82, her mother lived until 86, great gran lived until 80.

silver you don't seem to understand the difference between anecdote and evidence.

Not all smokers will get lung cancer but the evidence that smoking causes lung cancer is irrefutable.

"things you were linking as 'normal risks' were not really comparable."

We are not comparing them except to say that those are also harmful to a fetus, and that you would have severely restrict pregnant women's lives to eliminate them.

"Some were necessary evils and had to be done to earn your income or simply to get to work e.g. Crossing a busy road, doing a stressful job."

Why should work trump a life? Besides, many women don't have to work, as they are financially supported by their partners. So would you say they should not go to their stressful jobs, walking down busy roads inhaling toxic car fumes?

What about women who don't work but still want to walk down busy roads inhaling said toxic fumes? How selfish to take that risk for no reason other than shopping or seeing friends!

"Others had benefits like getting fit e.g. Sport."

Doing sports before pregnancy you are already fit. Skiing for a week when pregnant doesn't make you fit. Ban pregnant women from the slopes?

"Your apparently dispassionate dismissal of that developing child as a 'nothing' without any rights is frankly scary."

I didn't call a fetus "nothing". What is scary here is your intellectual dishonesty, putting in quotation marks a word I have not even used in this thread

What I said was that the fetus has no rights, and that is fact in the UK and in most other Western countries.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for you to show where exactly you see evidence of hysteria in my post from 16:06 yesterday. The alternative is to withdraw your insult and apologize.

If you don't want to care for a developing child - don't get pregnant. It's that simple really.

Right

Do you also think that contraception is 100% reliable and that only stupid people get pregnant by accident?

coffee - no, but if the person does get pregnant and decides to keep the baby, then be responsible for the developing child you find yourself bringing in to the world

As you can imagine it can be incredibly stressful being locked up against your will for being ill without throwing this on top.

Absolutely. The difference is, you're looking at this from the perspective of a smoker who will find it stressful to go without a cigarette. I'm looking at it from my perspective- as an asthmatic who is badly affected by smokey environment and would find being stuck with other people smoking against my will extremely stressful. It's hard to see why one person's right to a stress-relieving smoke should trump someone else's right to breathe properly (both of whom are under horribly stressful circumstances)

Like it or not, when you're pregnant your body isn't solely your own.

Of course it is athomedadglos! Who else's body would it be?

"when you're pregnant your body isn't solely your own."

It is, actually.

I was careful to eat healthy and avoided certain foods (as was the recommendation at the time) when pregnant because I wanted the best for my baby, but that was because that is what I wanted to do with my body. I also had a cup of coffee per day and half a glass of wine several times during those 9 months. Because I wanted to. And because I didn't become incapacitated & unable to make decisions about what I put into my fucking body when an egg got fertilized by a sperm.

Like it or not, when you're pregnant your body isn't solely your own.

My body is solely my own at all times.

coffee- no, but if the person does get pregnant and decides to keep the baby, then be responsible for the developing child you find yourself bringing in to the world

Do you think that a smoker should abort then if they can't give up?

No - but they should behave with great concern for the welfare of the developing child

No - but they should behave with great concern for the developing child

Sorry, I don't really understand this answer. How do you think a woman who can't give up smoking should behave then, that could be classified as 'with great concern for the developing child'?

I suppose if they used to smoke say, 20 a day, and cut it down to say, 5 a day, that might count as behaving with great concern for the developing child. Is this what you're thinking?

coffee - that would be a start - giving up completely would be better for mum and child's health of course.

No cutting down is good but if you continue to smoke you clearly care more for cigarettes than your child. It's not rocket science do I choose to continue to feed my addiction or do I choose to provide the best possible start for my child- and do myself an enormous health favour as a side effect.

Goodness crumbs! How does someone get so narrow minded?

"It's not rocket science do I choose to continue to feed my addiction or do I choose to provide the best possible start for my child"

I'm not sure that a judgemental and unempathetic mother is the best possible start in life for a child but hey ho.

For the record, I don't smoke and have not smoked during my pregnancies.

I know several heavy smokers who, when pregnant, were told by their doctors that they can have 1-2 cigarettes per day as the stress of nicotine withdrawal is apparently worse for the baby than those few cigarettes.

The moral of the story and this whole thread is that you don't know what is going on in the lives of those people you are judging. You don't know if that is the 1 cigarette they have allowed themselves that day, down from 40 per day.

Narrow minded? Oh I should be tolerant of those who choose to deliberately inflict harm? Its a completely unnecessary and harmful habit. There is nothing good about it. It benefits nobody but tobacco companies. We should be intolerant. I'm not that keen on meningitis either but that isn't something one has a choice about. I'm quite judgemental about drink driving too, come to that - and my view has very little to do with it being illegal.