From Kaji I get this link to an article in the Washington Post about how the CDC wants to integrate pre-pregnancy health into the everyday health care plans of all American women.  This is in an effort to lower the abysmally high infant mortality rate in the U.S., which has been a source of embarrassment. (according to the article, “three times that of Japan and 2.5 times those of Norway, Finland and Iceland, according to a report released last week by Save the Children, an advocacy group.”)

Some people think that maybe increasing accessibility to care amongst the sociological and economic minorities where infant mortality is highest might be a good idea.  But that would possibly infringe on the rights of the wealthy to pay fewer taxes and the rights of the medical industry to reap obscene profits.  Eventually, of course, we will have to get around to addressing those issues.

But until that happens, the CDC seems to want to focus on prevention.  Which makes a certain amount of sense.  Preventive health care is cheaper, uses fewer resources, has fewer negative side-effects, and more positive side-benefits than waiting for sickness to happen and doing active treatment.  Appropriate preventive medicine is both good medicine and good business.  Promoting appropriate preventive medicine is good public policy.

The problem comes in that the “Preventive medicine” they are advocating is treatment of human beings that don’t exist yet and (if plans go right) will not exist in the near future…and to benefit these non-people, people who already exist are being asked to drastically modify and limit their behavior and their lifestyle. 

In a world where a disturbing number of people believe that a woman has fewer rights than her unborn child, it seems that this government policy is suggesting that a woman actually has fewer rights than her unconceived child.

The CDC is urging doctors to think of their female patients between the ages of puberty and menopause as “pre-pregnant”.  As in, make health care in preparation for a healthy pregnancy part of standard health care for women.  The CDC would like for women in this age group to think of themselves as “pre-pregnant”.  They should take folic acid supplements, manage known health concerns such as asthma and diabetes, avoid environmental toxins, etc. just in case they “accidentally” get pregnant.

I would like to observe that “accidental” pregnancies can be expected to rise under the administration’s policy of advocating and funding “abstinence only” education that actively spreads misinformation discouraging the use of contraceptives…and discourages people from getting information on how to properly use contraceptives to effectively prevent pregnancy.

Women who are planning to get pregnant often already know what they need to about preventive care (as getting educated is part of the whole planning process), and begin preparations of their body before trying to get pregnant.  Many women don’t have to make a lot of changes, because a healthy body is a healthy body…and if you already follow general health guidelines, you really don’t have to do much else to get ready for a shot at an optimal pregnancy.

But there are two objections to this move on the part of the CDC:

One is that it doesn’t address the larger, hairier and more fundamental issue that there are millions of women in this country that don’t have access to health care.  They are the ones with the highest infant mortality rate, and they are not going to be served by this policy because they do not have access to the health care that is supposed to follow these guidelines for treating them with preventive health care.  So it will do little to actually affect infant mortality.

The second objection is that it shows an increasing attitude on the part of our social institutions to view women’s bodies as baby factories.  It is suspected that this move comes from a world-view where women have special obligations and limitations because they are women.  They are understood to have fewer rights than unborn children (and, as I said, apparently unconceived children), fewer options as to appropriate lifestyle choices, and should they marry a man, or have a child, the man she married or the father of her child has power over her future decisions.

As I read this story, I could help think about “Prussian Blue” the twin teeny-bopper White Nationalist folk group.  On their website, they lament that "young white women with good eugenics" (their words not mine) don’t put enough of a priority on having babies.  Their view point is that women have an obligation to their race to keep themselves morally, ethically and racially pure for the expressed purpose of producing optimal babies.

It’s bothersome for me, because I am all for preventive health, and I’m a big fan of doing whatever you can to make sure that all babies born in the United States are as healthy and full of promise as possible.

And yet…this doesn’t seem to be the way to go about it.  It seems like preventing unwanted and unplanned pregnancies is better than having to revert to some sort of mystically imposed sacred duty of womanhood to subvert our independence for the health of our children and our nation.  It seems as thought the goal of Planned Parenthood (every child a wanted child) is worthier than the goal of those who would demand that women give up all the ground gained in the last fifty years and go back to being second class citizens.

It seems as though we should be able to make every pregnancy a healthy pregnancy and every woman a healthy woman, and every child a healthy child without making the concept of “pre-pregnancy” the foundation of woman’s health.

And it seems to me that preventive medicine would be best practiced in a broad spectrum effort to bring down health care costs and demands on the system to make it a resource available to all rather than as a tool for enforcing some arcane and archaic view of how a woman should think and behave and be valued