united-states criminal-law united-kingdom medical human-rights
How can nicotine be legal for a pregnant lady?
<p>If a Lady is tested positive for THC it is illegal and depending on location one can be arrested and the baby taken, but if they smoke cigarettes to cause the unborn baby to die there is no penalty? How is this criminally legal?</p>

<p><a href="https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/85250/can-an-unborn-baby-die-from-a-nicotine-overdose">https://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/85250/can-an-unborn-baby-die-from-a-nicotine-overdose</a></p>

<p>As for the "how is this legal?" part, it depends on what laws have been passed in the country in question: if a legislature wants to absolutely discourage smoking tobacco. Even though marijuana is illegal in the US in many states, there are general limits on arbitrary searches, so if a pregnant female is subjected to a blood search, a finding of THC in her system will not be used against her and will not result in the unborn child later being taken from her. On the other hand, there are countries where the government has very broad power, but even so I know of no evidence of any country that searches pregnant females for presence of THC and uses a positive result as a grounds for taking the child. In other words, your assumption about marijuana and taking babies from their mothers is lacking in factual support.</p>

<p>The causal connection between smoking and stillbirth is not strong enough to satisfy the <em>mens rea</em> requirements for criminality, that is, if a woman has a miscarriage and the woman smoked during the pregnancy, you cannot legally prove that the smoking caused the miscarriage (many facts cause miscarriages, proving that it was smoking is very hard to to). In addition, the US and UK (and most other) legal systems do not treat a fetus as a legal person, so even if smoking were proven to cause a miscarriage, it's still not automatically illegal. A law might be passed which made it illegal, but again it just depends on what laws the country has passed. </p>
