As for smokers, drunks, and drug addicts: quit if you plan on getting pregnant.

Smokers

Children of pregnant smokers are especially likely to have learning disorders, behavioral problems, and relatively low IQs (2). Just what we need: more morons and criminals filling our streets.

Drinkers

If you drink and want to get pregnant, stop drinking before conception. Why gamble with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (3)? As for drinking and sleeping with your child, if you cannot stop drinking then it is probably safer to have your child in a crib, although if you cannot stop drinking during the first few years of your child's life, it would be better if your infant was taken into foster care. After all, you shouldn't be drinking and breast feeding and a drunk is unlikely to be able to know when her infant is in danger. An alcoholic should not have had a baby in the first place and when you got pregnant you should have done the right thing.

Drug Addicts

Whatever drug you're on, your fetus is on. If you won't go to rehab [even though rehab has a terrible success rate] and the only way you can score drugs is to spread your legs, then do the world a favor and get sterilized. As for crack-whores, the birth defects they saddle their children with are so numerous, horrible and outrageous that they should be sterilized by law.

What business is it of mine what you do during pregnancy? Hey, if you are a pregnant whiskey-swilling. drug-addled, cigar-smoking fat pig in the wilderness of British Columbia and your disease-ridden child makes it past stillbirth and will never come to America and drain our resources and fill our prisons, then I say, go at it, have a dozen little retarded social misfits, I don't care. But if I'm payin' I got the right to sayin'.

ENDNOTES

(1):

Prenatal-Health Suite101, Health Concerns for Obese and Pregnant Women

There are many studies that have looked at the connections between maternal obesity or overweight and prenatal or postnatal health. Many of these studies have identified increased risks to both the mother's health and that of the baby.

...

Obese women are also more likely to have stillborn babies or babies with birth defects, such as spina bifida, cardiovascular defects, hydrocephaly, and limb abnormalities.

(2):

Baby Center, How smoking during pregnancy affects you and your baby

"Smoking cigarettes is probably the No. 1 cause of adverse outcomes for babies," says Welch, who's the chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan. He's seen the complications far too many times: babies born prematurely, babies born too small, babies who die before they can be born at all. In his view, pregnancies would be safer and babies would be healthier if pregnant smokers could somehow swap their habit for a serious disease such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

"I can control those conditions with medications," Welch says. But when a pregnant woman smokes, he says, nothing can protect her baby from danger.

...

On average, smoking during pregnancy doubles the chances that a baby will be born too early or weigh less than 5 ½ pounds at birth. Smoking also more than doubles the risk of stillbirth.

...

Smoking during pregnancy can have lifelong effects on your baby's brain. Children of pregnant smokers are especially likely to have learning disorders, behavioral problems, and relatively low IQs.

(3):

About.com, Alcohol and Pregnancy

For those who might think drinking during pregnancy is no big deal, here is a list of the potential problems their newborns could be facing as a result, according to Missouri Department of Mental Health, Division of Alcohol and Drug Abuse:

* Small body size and weight
* Slower than normal development and failure to "catch up."
* Deformed ribs and sternum
* Curved spine and hip dislocations
* Bent, fused, webbed, or missing fingers or toes
* Limited movement of joints
* Small head
* Facial abnormalities
* Small eye openings
* Skin webbing between eyes and base of nose
* Drooping eyelids
* Nearsightedness
* Failure of eyes to move in same direction
* Short upturned nose
* Sunken nasal bridge
* Flat or absent groove between nose and upper lip
* Thin upper lip
* Opening in roof of mouth
* Small jaw
* Low-set or poorly formed ears
* Organ deformities
* Heart defects or heart murmurs
* Genital malformations
* Kidney and urinary defects
* Central nervous system handicaps
* Small brain
* Faulty arrangement of brain cells and connective tissue
* Mental retardation -- occasionally severe
* Learning disabilities
* Short attention span
* Irritability in infancy
* Hyperactivity in childhood
* Poor body, hand, and finger coordination