by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Pregnancy

It's well known that smoking during pregnancy is terrible for your baby, yet about 1 in 14 pregnant women still engage in the habit, according to a new report.
Smoking during pregnancy puts babies at risk of being born prematurely, suffering birth defects and dying before birth. Children whose moms smoked during pregnancy are also especially vulnerable to asthma, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and learning difficulties.
But despite these well established risks, just over 7% of women in 2016 reported smoking at some time during their pregnancy, according to the report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which drew information from birth certificates. The frequency of smoking in pregnancy varied widely by state, age, race and education level. West Virginia had the highest prevalence of smoking while pregnant ? a whopping 1 in 4 women reported smoking there. That was followed by Kentucky (18% of pregnant women), Montana (16.5%), Vermont (15.5%) and Missouri (15%).

Meanwhile, California had the lowest number of pregnant smokers ? just 1.6%. Utah, Texas, Hawaii, New Jersey, Nevada, Arizona, New York and Connecticut, and the District of Columbia also had smoking rates under 5%.
Older women ? those ages 30 and older ? and those with some college or an associates degree were less likely to smoke in pregnancy than younger and less educated women, the report found. American Indian and Alaska Native women had the ...