By Blad Tolstoy
Yes, as usual the anti-joy movement strikes the most vulnerable first in its voracious desire to impose its will on the world. This time it's pregnant women who make such easy targets as they are emotionally blackmailed into 
stopping smoking and drinking for fear of damaging their unborn child. A very worrying feature of this approach is that it makes the woman's body no longer her own as busybodies and do-gooders stick their snouts in because they always know what's best for everyone else. What would be best for everyone else, of course, would be if the busybodies dropped dead which, thank goodness, they all will do at some time or another despite the fact that they think that if everyone lives like they do we will all live forever. All I can say is that life is far too short to worry about living forever and that worry and guilt are probably two of the factors most damaging to good health that there are.
It is with that in mind that I dug up this fairly recent article by my old pal Simon Heffer at The Daily Telegraph. Well, he's not my old pal really but sometimes I feel he is for although there are subjects on which we differ in our opinions very sharply, when it comes to the defence of liberty Simon is up there with the best of them. So here we go:
"Nine months without a drink"
All around us are normal, healthy, intelligent and fit people whose mothers committed what it seems is shortly to be the crime of drinking alcohol while pregnant with them. I know the medical profession means well, but this is simply another part of its not-so-hidden agenda where alcohol is concerned. Having helped to make it almost illegal to smoke except in the Sahara Desert in a westerly wind - and then only if there are no camels within a 20-mile radius - doctors now wish to do the same for boozing. Expectant mothers are a soft target. Presumably men will be next, being told that more than a pint of beer a month will wreck your chances of fathering a child. I know you think I'm joking so laugh while you can.
Simon
Heffer.
