Hi, folks! Ima Frawde here, everybody’s favorite homebirth advocate, with some surprising news. Homebirth advocates have learned, through a process of deduction and logic, that smoking in pregnancy is both empowering and safe.
How do we know? Let me count the ways.
1. Smoking is natural.
Smoking involves three things: tobacco, fire and breathing. All three are 100% natural. Here’s what Wikipedia says about the research on tobacco:
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, … used in some medicines. It is … a valuable cash crop for countries such as Cuba, China and the United States. Tobacco, name for any plant of the genus Nicotiana of the Solanaceae family (nightshade family) and for the product manufactured from the leaf and used in cigars and cigarettes, snuff, and pipe and chewing tobacco.
See, it’s a crop. No different from wheat or rice. Of course you do have to be careful about toxins. That’s why homebirth advocates know that you should only smoke 100% organic tobacco.
Need more scientific data? Try:
Organic Growth Factor Requirements of Tobacco Tissue Cultures, Physiologia Plantarum, Volume 18, Issue 1, pages 100–127, January 1965
A Revised Medium for Rapid Growth and Bio Assays with Tobacco Tissue Cultures, Physiologia Plantarum, Volume 15, Issue 3, pages 473–497, July 1962
The complete nucleotide sequence of the tobacco chloroplast genome: its gene organization and expression, EMBO J. 1986 September; 5(9): 2043–2049
That’s three real scientific papers. There are plenty more and when I have time I’ll cut and paste the rest of them for you.
2. Smoking does not harm babies.
All ten of my friends who smoked while pregnant had healthy babies. And, I have read stories on line of fifty other women who smoked and no harm came to any of their babies. Plus, they were empowered by their decision to ignore what their doctor said and do what feels right to them.
3. If smoking were harmful, we wouldn’t be here.
Before that fear mongering Surgeon General’s report on the “dangers” of tobacco published back in the early 1960’s, half of US women smoked while pregnant. Not only are we still here, but the US population has GROWN since that time. According to the CIA World Factbook, the US population has been growing at a rate of 0.883%.
4. If smoking were harmful to an individual baby, his mother would know it.
Strong, fierce mamas have super powerful mama-intuition. If they thought for one minute that their babies were being deprived of oxygen when they smoked, they wouldn’t do it. They don’t take risks with their babies lives. They KNOW that smoking while pregnant is a safe, empowering choice.
5. Guess what my OB said??!! “Smoking leads to abruption, prematurity, low birth weight, and stillbirth.” Yup, like all other obstetricians, he played the dead baby card. Why? Isn’t the answer obvious?
It’s all about the money. Smoking leads to smaller babies who are more likely to be delivered vaginally, thereby depriving obstetricians of the opportunity to do a C-section and ruin a woman’s birth experience. And we all know that obstetricians make only $5 dollars for a vaginal birth and $50,000 for each and every C-section birth extraction.
Doctors have been engaged in a witch hunt against tobacco farmers for the past 50 years. Does that seem fair to you? All those rich doctors ganging up on those dirt poor tobacco farmers all because they resent the economic competition.
6. What about those stories of people who die of lung cancer? First of all, how do we know that they got lung cancer from smoking? Maybe they would have gotten lung cancer anyway even if they had followed their doctor’s advice. Second, plenty of people smoke and don’t get lung cancer. Third, some people never smoke and get lung cancer anyway. See, for example, CYP1A1 and GSTM1 genetic polymorphisms and lung cancer risk in Caucasian non-smokers: a pooled analysis, Carcinogenesis, Volume 24, Issue 5, Pp. 875-882.
So there you have it. Smoking in pregnancy is a safe empowering choice. All you have to do is “trust tobacco.”
Wait. What? Yes, it’s true the the thought process in determining that smoking in pregnancy is safe bears a striking resemblance to my arguments for the safety of homebirth. But we all know that homebirth is safe, so that’s just another reason why we should believe that smoking in pregnancy is safe, too.
There’s no need to thank me for these incredible insights of logic and reasoning. Just show your appreciation by buying a copy of the latest edition of my book, The Spiritual Tobacconist.
