The National Institute for Clinical Excellent (NICE) has issued guidance advising that, given the risks, pregnant women ought to be tested for smoking. …Yes. You read that correctly. NICE advise that all pregnant women should be given breath tests that can detect elevated levels of carbon monoxide, which will show the midwife/doctor that the pregnant woman either smokes, or is regularly exposed to second-hand smoke.

And I suppose this makes sense, given most pregnant women lack the capacity for language-use; so it would be terribly difficult to ask them whether they smoke. op! What’s that you say? They don’t? Pregnant women can usually both speak and understand some natural language or other?

Last I checked, smoking is harmful to lots of creatures–not just fetuses. In fact, I’m pretty sure that all mammals are negatively affected by carbon monoxide. Do we need to test *everyone*? No? Why is that? Here are some theories I’ve come up with:

Those pesky pregnant women lie more than other patients.

The health of other human creatures doesn’t matter as much as the health of fetuses.

Pregnant women speak too slowly for information on their smoking status to be acquired in a timely fashion verbally.

It’s a known fact that most pregnant women are out to harm their fetuses and need to be blocked from doing so.

Health practitioners are barred by law from asking the husbands/partners medical questions about the women, which precludes the possibility of acquiring accurate information about the woman (since, really, the head of the household is the only one in the family who isn’t a silly little thing).

Pregnant women have no right to privacy.

Have I missed any? OH wait. Silly me. (see? my husband should be writing this.) I forgot the most obvious one:

Pregnant women are simply the devious chunks of flesh wrapped around the real patient.

more from the BBC here.