Someone mentioned that "smoking is foolish, but not immoral".

I'm hard pressed not to call it an abomination when I see a pregnant woman with a cigarette in her mouth.

To a lesser degree, when I see parents puffing away at a restaurant table with their young children sitting at their side.

Near the bottom of the 'heinous' scale would be he or she who patently does something that hurts themselves, even if for the moment it looks like he/she is the only one affected.

One doesn't have to be a Buddhist ascetic, Hindu mystic, Jewish rabbi, or Christian prophet for the word "immoral" to come to mind.

And with the twisted "don't tell ME what to do" morality of today, the person who walked past the woman poisoning her unborn child and remarked "Shame on you!" would be considered a Nazi, while the one actually harming herself and others would be looked upon as the victim of oppression.

[This message has been edited by RobertK (edited 04-01-2004).]