Right to Life

Tobacco and Fetuses

To the Editor:

Unfortunately for inveterate smokers (“Smoke Signals” editorial, August 14th), the right to keep and smoke cigarettes in public has not yet been constitutionalized. The right to kill your unborn baby has been; but the right to pollute others with tobacco smoke has not.
Perhaps such a right could be found in the smoky penumbras of the Bill of Rights, just where the right to abortion was hatched.
Until the Supreme Court rules otherwise, local government can ban smoking in public places, but cannot protect the unborn baby in his natural habitat: the womb.
Is secondary smoke a worse offense than infant murder? The answer is obvious. Yet smoke control laws expand while abortion control legislation languishes.
Countless more people die from breathing the Supreme Court’s smoke than from anything the Marlboro man produces.

-Martin Wishnatsky
Fargo