My older brother was conceived in 1969. My mother didn't have many options back then- for example, she couldn't get an abortion so she and my father married and started their strange little life together. They lived in a tiny apartment in Oakland. My father used to ride his bicycle to work every day, and my parents spent the spring she was pregnant finishing up at art school and graduating. My mother did everything right while pregnant. She tells us about how she went to all her prenatal appointments and asked the doctors every question she could think of.

One of the questions she swears she asked over and over was whether it was okay for her to smoke while pregnant. She vehemently swears the physicians told her up and down that it was fine if she smoked during the pregnancy, in fact if she felt better then she SHOULD smoke. So she smoked cigarettes from conception to delivery.

My brother was born six weeks early. He was incubated for a month after birth because he had pneumonia. She didn't even get to touch him for weeks after his birth. She was prohibited from even reaching into his incubator to stroke his tiny little head. She manually pumped her own beast milk the entire time because she knew it would be beneficial for him once he was released from the hospital and she didn't want to dry up. She even hid in the bathroom of the hospital one time when they tried to give her a shot of hormones to dry up the milk. She refused to come out until they left her alone.

My brother had multiple problems growing up. he was a skinny little baby who grew up into a tall skinny teenager. he was a difficult child who became an angry teenager. he had problems with substance abuse. He never got along with our father. He struggled socially. He had horrible vision problems. He had multiple summers spent with pneumonia so bad all he could do was sleep on a cot my parents had set up in the shade of the largest tree in our back yard. He was a sick kid.

My mother is convinced that all the problems my brother suffered from and still struggles with are directly related to his premature birth and difficult first months. She and my father didn't get to bond with him. Everything they tried failed.

Now, more than 30 years later, we have indisputable data that proves that smoking causes premature birth and low birth weight. Why any mother would choose this risk for their child is beyond me. I understand addiction- believe me I understand addiction. But I also understand responsibility.

My whole family experience has been defined in part by my brother's premature birth and the sequelae of that birth. My father has said that he sometimes thinks that the divorce was due in part to their difficulties with my brother when he was an adolescent. To this day my mother regrets not listening to her instincts and quitting smoking while she was pregnant.

It's interesting to me how much power medical practitioners have over their patients. Interesting how one event caused a ripple that defined our family, from beginning to end, from conception to divorce.

We have a friend who made a decision similar to the one my mother made back in 1969. This friend chose to ignore the facts and smoked through her pregancy as well. her baby was born early. I wonder if she will also spend the rest of her life wondering, drawing links between her choices as a pregnant woman and her life with her child.

There has been a lot of discussion in this community about this incident. I like to think that the events that have taken place have forced us all to think a lot about our own lives and decisions and how they may affect others. The worst thing about it for me is the way I now feel about the mother and her new family.