I accept the cruise ship limitation, since they're often days away from sophisticated medical assistance. On the other hand, women taking flights "home" are heading TO large metropolitan areas with competent neonatal help. While there is the rare story of a child born way prematurely on the plane, we have kids born way prematurely in remote parts of Colorado, and on remote parts of many other states. The current rule of 27 weeks is fully 3 months before the expected due date for a full-term baby, and it would seem that this is adequate. There really isn't a magic # of weeks of pregnancy that you could choose -- as soon as you set it at 25 weeks, you'll have someone give birth prematurely at 24 weeks. We're always harping on the TSA for being unreasonable and impractical in their decisionmaking, and I'd suggest that engineering more and more restrictions on pregnant women flying is about the same. Many women, particularly those in a first pregnancy, still aren't even showing very much by 27 weeks, and a reasonable woman checks with her doctor before flying anyway.

Frankly, we'd probably save more lives by prohibiting 50-year-old and older male smokers from flying on the grounds that they're more likely to suffer a heart attack while flying and we don't have the advanced care necessary to treat them on the plane. Somehow I don't think that idea will gain a lot of traction, but really, why handcuff women for an even less likely problem?