Smoking can cause significant damage to women's reproductive system.
This is more than double the Healthy People 2000 goal to reduce prevalence for reproductive age women to 12 percent. If current trends continue, smoking will have a tremendous health impact on smoking mothers and their unborn or born children. In addition, smoking-related pregnancy complications will cause a dramatic cost burden to the nation's health care system. Women who smoke during pregnancy are at risk for premature birth, pregnancy complications, low-birthweight infants, stillbirth, and a higher rate of infant mortality. In 1995, approximately 14 percent of women smoked during pregnancy down 5 percent from 1994 and 29 percent since 1989.