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• ASH PR: New Law Would Ban Smoking While Pregnant Movement Gets Boost With Endorsement by Gov. Huckabee [06/14/06-5] 

A proposal to ban smoking by women who are pregnant got a boost when Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee -- who just signed a law banning smoking in a car when children are present -- endorsed the concept, saying that it makes sense from a health point of view. He called for a study to determine whether such a legislative proposal -- designed to protect the health of the fetus and to reduce the huge costs of treating babies born prematurely and/or with birth defects caused by maternal smoking -- would be lawful.

But law professor John Banzhaf, who has successfully led a movement which has spread smoking bans outdoors, into private homes (in custody cases and where foster children live), into apartments (when neighbors complain), and into cars (when children are present), says expanding it into wombs would be constitutional.

"Since court after court has held that smoking is not a fundamental right like voting, and that smokers are not a protected class like African Americans or women, the government has wide leeway in fashioning a remedy for whatever it concludes is a problem requiring corrective legislation," says Banzhaf.

The law is clear, he says, that governments are free to ban one cause of a problem which not regulating another. . . .

"Reasonable people may disagree with Gov. Huckabee's view that a law banning smoking by pregnant women would be desirable or even feasible, but it seems reasonably clear that, if enacted, such a law would be constitutional and withstand any challenge in the courts," predicts Prof. Banzhaf.

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