Smart recalled: “An editorial crisis arose when a woman in the Gasoline Alley strip became pregnant and her waistline started to increase. There was a discussion of retouching the woman’s abdomen or even suspending the comic strip during her pregnancy.
“Finally four editors and I met with the managing editor, Walter Lister, on the emergency. I spoke up for the woman on the grounds that even Philadelphians were aware of where babies come from, that motherhood had not yet been ruled obscene and that I, in my formative years, (Smart was then a copy boy) had watched my mother enlarge without suffering any deleterious effects that I was aware of.
Lister laughed and allowed the pregnancy to be depicted. Some weeks later he asked me, “How does it feel to be responsible for the first pregnant lady in the Bulletin?”