Stuff like the hair dye myth starts with a tiny kernel of truth. Basically, some chemicals in some dyes when administered in very high doses in animal studies have displayed teratogenic effects. That this then gets extrapolated to "pregnant women shouldn't dye their hair" is ridiculous.
My favorite similar myth, "you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day."
I saw a similar post on this via Ezra, and I don't really get this perspective. People are solicitous of pregnant people. They stop smoking around them, they offer their seats to them, etc. Sometimes they go overboard, and are intrusive, out of a complete absense of knowledge. But, in general, I'd think being solicitous of the pregnant was a good thing.
Solicitous enough so I can't work out with a trainer? Solicitous enough that people lecture me for having a glass of wine in my seventh month, a time at which there is absolutely no evidence at all that light drinking has any harmful effect? That kind of solicitous people can shove where it will do the most good.
Something to keep in mind, that Amanda M. pointed out over at Pandagon, the WaPo's article was horrendous. The actual CDC document really doesn't read the way the WaPo portrays it.
"Solicitous" is not a good word here, because it conflates "considerate" with "bossy". Since we have the word "considerate", meaning "solicitous but not intrusive and annoying", it makes more sense to say it is good that people are considerate of pregnant women but bad that people are bossy toward them, rather than pretending it is impossible to be pleasant to a pregnant woman without also acting as if you own her foetus.
Precisely. And Amanda is right about the report -- it really isn't nearly as bad as the WaPo article. I'm wondering if there's an intervening press release that explains the WaPo article.
I'm griping about the attitude toward pregnancy more than the report itself.
SCTM, I think there's a fine line between solicitous and paternalistic. You can have my seat on the subway is usually solicitous. My own son has some serius allergy problems (he's happy, but 2.5 year olds on daily medication is not fun). One person saying that if my wife had eaten differently this wouldn't have happened was enough to create a Category IV guilt event. A totally unnecessary one by my estimation.
My own thought is whether this is the sort of health guidelines that would, in this administration, be issued for any other class of people.
Is this really that different from reports that say the population in general should stop smoking, should exercise, and should eat healthily? Considering how many births are the result of unplanned pregancies, this is probably a good thing.
Yes it is, because it suggests buggering around with epilepsy medication and such like for women, on the basis that even if they're not pregnant and don't plan to be, they're pre pregnant.
Look at it this way; if the US government advised all of its citizens to maintain something like a military level of fitness, because after all you could be conscripted at any minute so we are all in a very real sense "pre-draftees", would that not be a bit creepy? It is specifically breaking the Kantian rule by not treating women as ends in themselves but as potential baby factories.
it makes more sense to say it is good that people are considerate of pregnant women but bad that people are bossy toward them, rather than pretending it is impossible to be pleasant to a pregnant woman without also acting as if you own her foetus.
I agree. But it strikes me that it's not that uncommon for people to feel an obligation to some kid they don't know, and to doubt a parent's fitness. I remember being on some subway and seeing a mom absolutely slap the shit out of her kid for some infraction. I didn't say anything on the "not my kid" principle, but someone else did, and at the time I was glad they did.
Also, I'm coming from this from the other side. At one time, it used to annoy the hell out of me that society seemed bent on creating a child-friendly world everywhere. So I might be overinfluenced by a sense of what "not considerate" might mean.
Actually, even the military preparedness analogy is too weak; it's like if McDonalds were to issue a press release advising everyone to have their hair cut a certain way and not get tattoos because between the ages of 18 and 65 we are all potential burger-flippers.
Yes it is, because it suggests buggering around with epilepsy medication and such like for women
Uh... is it *actually* suggesting this, or do you just think it's a logical conclusion of the attitude? These are medical professionals, not right-to-life lunatics. As Ezra's post pointed out, this seems to me simply to be a fairly sane if a bit starry-eyed wishlist.
It would be nice if women who might accidentally get pregnant stayed relatively healthy. Similarly, it would be nice if the guy sitting next to me on an airplane remained trim enough to not spill into my seat. If I were a professional travel-advice-dispenser, I'd say that sure, ideally everyone would remain in a coach-class-ready state, and here's how. There's no particularly good reason not to be. But nobody's going to force you.
I can understand how any attempt to point out the biological impact women have on their infants may be greeted with hostility -- it's just a step away from assigning them legal responsibility for fetal well-being, after all. But in this case we're only talking about babies brought to term. And insofar as nobody's denying that the report's recommendations are true, I'm not sure what's to be gained by getting pissed off about them. You're welcome to take em or leave em, of course.
I think you and B are way, way off on this, LB. These guidelines and outreach programs are intended for an audience that includes women who don't know and are difficult to reach—the message must be clear and repetitive. It's the CDC's job to reach women who aren't reading blogs, and if in doing so they offend mothers who already know better, I don't know. Seems like an acceptable risk.
This is just a symptom of the general problem of people being completely bonkers about kids and safety.
In 1970 you didn't even have to put a kid in a car seat, and somehow most of us made it through the day. Nowadays, if you let them watch more than 30 minutes of Blues Clues you're going to give them ADHD and destroy their life.
Car seats and lots of other things ARE of course good ideas, but people seem to lose sight of the fact that we are all healthier, longer-lived, and safer than at pretty much any other time in history.
I am wondering who is targeted by this movement. I already feel like every time I go to the gyno, I have to justify every sexual and nonreproductive decision I've ever made and get catechized on the comparative effectiveness of birth control. My guess is this is meant to target women who do not go to the gyno at all (because, fucking DUH, they don't have health insurance) by making it a commonplace (or "meme," if you will) to call all women "pre-pregnant." Sounds to me like yet another way to get around that pesky providing-health-care business by belitting women and poor people.
another way to get around that pesky providing-health-care business by belitting women and poor people.
Yes, universal health care would do wonders for the health of poorer people, but the CDC can't provide it. I don't see how providing useful information to people who would otherwise have little way to access it is belittling them.
Being called "pre-pregnant" is belittling, for the reasons outlined in 13, and also for the reason the Bitch states on her blog -- why not focus on the health of the women themselves, instead of the health of non-existent children those women might one day have if they fulfilled their human duty?
26: Pre-natal health, though related to women's health in general, is not the same thing. There is value in giving advice related specifically to pregnancy.
26: Except that the CDC appears to be worried about women who (a) accidently get pregnant, and (b) will still want the kid. To the extent that a significant percentage of kept pregnancies are accidental, a significant percentage of fertile women are pre-pregnant.
16: I don't know about the McDonald's analogy. How often do you 1) become a burger flipper without knowing about it for several weeks to a month, and 2) accidentally apply for and get hired in a job as a burger flipper? I know Ambien had caused people to sleep-eat, but that would be a new one. Always practice safe job interviewing.
To the extent that a significant percentage of kept pregnancies are accidental, a significant percentage of fertile women are pre-pregnant
And to the extent that "a significant percentage" multiplied by "a significant percentage", multiplied by the actual risk factor of some of the things they are talking about is a number so close to zero that God Almighty would be putting his reading glasses on to see the difference, this approach to public health is ridiculous.
Read the thing; it's linked above. They are genuinely talking about encouraging doctors not to prescribe certain medicines for "pre-pregnant" women with epilepsy, because they are risk factors for certain prenatal conditions. That really is an appalling approach to public health, because it is refusing to deal with the patient as an individual who might or might not want to get pregnant.
Look people. This is an administration with no track record at all in coming up with good public health policies, and a track record as long as your arm in coming up with sleazy little ways to exercise control over women. Why on earth would it be rational to give them the benefit of the doubt in this case? Just as someone snatching a drink out of a pregnant woman's hand might be a genuinely concerned medical professional who is concerned that the woman might be unaware of the risk factors of foetal alcohol syndrome, but nine times out of ten or more, is just a busybody little fuckhead.
Let's separate the government policy from the annoying attitudes of individuals. Is this not a reasonable approach to getting more support for universal health care, which would benefits far outweighing the fact that some nutsos consider you a baby vessel?
People are always saying pro-lifers are actually just anti-sexers, because they only care about teh baby sex- when reports come out showing things like the US has the 2nd worst infant mortality of industrialized nations (take that, Latvia!) we wonder where are the religious nuts who care about things besides sex. Well, this might be a good way to approach that problem- if you let the conservatives think universal health care is the right thing because it makes for good baby vessels, who cares what their motives are if they'll support good health care for everyone?
"My favorite similar myth, "you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day.""
Link, please? I googled it, and I don't see any contradictory sources. (Except for the ones that say you need to drink a half ounce a day for each pound of body weight, which ends up being 10 8-oz glasses if you weight 160 lbs or 8 if you weight 128.)
which would benefits far outweighing the fact that some nutsos consider you a baby vessel?
No. I refuse to play that game: "Come on, if you let people treat you like an incubator, then everyone will be better off." Then next week it's "Come on, we can get a decent level of income support for families in need if you play along; you didn't really want to be allowed to work outside the home, did you?"
Dsquared is completely right -- I'd missed the epilepsy drugs thing on my first pass through the recommendations.
Well, half of all pregancies in this country are unplanned (and the rate is far higher for women in poverty), and the effects of smoking and folic acid deficiency, etc. is pretty well demonstarted, so the impact here is probably quite a bit higher than zero.
Also, re: epliepsy drugs, the report just says that "women...who are contemplating pregnancy should be prescribed a lower dosage of these drugs". It doesn't say they shouldn't take them, and it limits this recommendation to those who are seeking to become pregnant. It is not a universal recommendation.
Is this not a reasonable approach to getting more support for universal health care
Well put it this way; was it put together by a) Aneurin Bevan, b) Michael Moore, c) Hillary Clinton or d) an arm of government managed by the Republican Party?
Aside from my mangled syntax, I meant it as a persuasive method, not something where you actually make concessions to be treated like an incubator. Tell one set of people, "Here's universal healthcare because it's the right thing economically, etc." Tell another set of people, "Universal healthcare is necessary because otherwise lots of babies will die and make Jesus cry." They agree on the outcome, but with different motivations for supporting it. (Obviously none of the "women are incubators" stuff is written into law.)
37: Actually, I'm not sure, I'd have to do more research than I have time for. It was put together by the CDC, which has political appointees at its head but a lot of career professionals. You'd have to find out the backgrounds of the authors. Who knows, maybe it was slipped in there by some libruls but couched in language sure to get it past their Republican overlords. It's like reading Pravda.
Uh, yes and of course it is wrong to treat women as mere vessels for the production of children. And of course, to the extent that is what the CDC has done, it is very bad.
But is the most reasonable way to view what they have done? Might it be nothing more than assuming that most people are concerned about the health of their children and that as a service to those people and their health-care providers and to address those people's needs, they are trying to provide those women with information so that those people and their healthcare providers can make informed choices about things that are important to them? Why does is this such a horrible thing? I thought we liked providing people with information so that they could make informed choices about their lives.
Yes, of course, it would be terrible if the Govenment told women that they had a duty to keep themselves ready to be "baby-vessels," but I missed it in the report where it says this.
They're talking about avoiding the prescription of effective epilepsy medications to fertile women
LB, this isn't really accurate. The report itself states:
Recommendations suggest that before conception, women who are on a regimen of these drugs and who are contemplating pregnancy should be prescribed a lower dosage of these drugs [emphasis added]
They're not talking about all fertile women, just those who are likely to become pregnant. And even for the people this recommendation is aimed at, they aren't saying "don't take the drugs", they're just advising a lower dose. Insofar as these drugs pose some risk to a fetus (which could be b.s., but I'm taking it at face value here), I'm not seeing the problem with informing women of the risk.
I think I've got to side with 'Smasher and the others who are making the more benign outreach/education interpretation.
God knows I sympathize with the more cynical take, and it was my first response as well, reading over the report itself doesn't seem to justify that response, I think, unless you're really looking for it.
Looking at some of the other publications of the primary authors, we have things like:
Taylor VM, Tompson B, Lessler D, Yasui y, Montano D, Johnson KM, Mahloch J, Mullen M, Li S, Bassett G, Goldberg HI. A clinic-based mammography internvention targeting inner city women. J Gen Intern Med 1999; 14:104-111.
and
High Prevalence of Self-Reported Forced Sexual Intercourse Among Internally Displaced Women in Azerbaijan (by Samuel Posner).
And the other authors are from various organizations, that seem to be on the side of the angels here. That is, they do seem to care about the health of women, as women, not simply as baby-vessels, and I think reading the report confirms that women's health in and of itself is a large motivation behind the recommendations.
In other words, yes, Republican asshats are busbody little fuckers, and they are littered about the FDA, and perhaps the CDC as well. But I don't think any of them wrote this report. I think the folks who DID write the report, would be surprised and disappointed by the more cynical interpretations of it.
But Carl, talk about your intentional fallacies. No one is saying that the authors of the study are evil people. We're talking about the rhetoric and effects of the piece.
And y'll will notice that LB made a point *in the post* of distinguishing between the recommendations and the rhetoric. Jeez. Pay attention.
44- Under the Soviets, you often had to read between the lines in USSR newspapers to figure out what was really going on. Sometimes by seeing what was omitted (Paper says everything is great in Moscow and Leningrad- so what bad thing happened in Kiev?); sometimes to try to pick up a subversive message that an author tried to sneak through the censors. I'm making a comparison to the latter in this case.
Fine then, but I haven't seen anyone waving this report around going, "Round up the women, get them their folic acid! They are the vessels of the next generation! The doctors said so!" I'm not insensitive to the rhetorical effects, and yes, we're living in a very chilling environment at the moment when it comes to women's and their sexual and physical autonomy. . . but, your argument about rhetorical effects quickly becomes reductio ad absurdum. You can't tell doctors not to think about and make recommendations about the health of women and infants because it might be used by conservatives to limit women's freedom.
So, yes, if the report is being used by anyone to that rhetorical effect, please point those people out, and I'll join you in condeming them, but condeming the CDC or the authors of the report seems misguided to me.
50: Yay! The benefit of the Bush administration is that it'll teach us all to be more careful readers.
51: The WaPo is. And again, no one *is* condemning the authors of the report, I don't think, or the CDC. Criticizing, maybe, in a limited way. And no one is telling doctors not to think about women's health, either.
And I don't think my take on it is any more of an intentional fallacy than the assumption that the report embodies a "social attitude toward pregnant women" that "pisses LB off" (and you as well it seems).
And again, no one *is* condemning the authors of the report, I don't think, or the CDC. Criticizing, maybe, in a limited way.
This seems to be a rhetorical stand-down from the post on your own site, which seems to conflate the report with the "federal government" treating women as "biological" specimens, etc. Which I think slanders pretty well-intentioned work.
Fair enough w/r/t LB's post and the stuff re. the CDC. The social attitude that women are primarily baby-factories *does* piss me off. I don't think that's what the CDC report is getting at, though. As distinct from the WaPo coverage ofo the CDC report, which is. And, I think, is attributing that attitude to the CDC, though whether this is because the WaPo are idiots or because they're cynically trying to create interest in their article, I can't say.
Carl, I've updated my site. Slander, shmander. The post you refer to is quoting the WaPo. If there's slander, it's they, not I, who are responsible for it.
54: Check BPhD's site for her latest post on it -- her earlier post relied on the WaPo as a fair representation of the contents of the report, which it really wasn't.
Look, the real piss-off here is the social attitude toward pregnant women described in my post. In the context of that attitude (which, trust me, exists and is powerful) a report which takes the general position that women should consider themselves potentially pregnant during their entire fertile lifespan (regardless of the sanity of the particular recommendations) is also going to be irritating. It evokes the spectre of being treated for most of my life with the condescending busybodydom I was treated with throughout my pregnancies.
Well, I want to agree with dsquared about the awfulness of the recommendations w/r/t the anti-epileptic drugs. The ob/gyn portion of teh medical establishment often treats psychiatric patients the same way, many of whom are taking those same anticonvulsants. Many ob/gyns are ignorant of the studies done on psychiatric patients taking anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs. The short answer is that there are risks, that they vary from drug to drug, but that those risks need to be balanced against the real risks posed to a fetus by untreated illness. Moreover, even a pregnant woman is more than just a womb and her health has value in its own right.
I told you all before about the student health services doctor who told me loudly on what was essentially an open ward that I needed to get an IUD, because one fo the drugs that I was taking was so dangerous to a fetus that it would be disastrous if I ever got pregnant on them. I didn't want to get pregnant (thought it would be disastrous for other reasons) and didn't have a boyfriend at the time (so it was moot), but she was ill-informed and condescending. Part of it is the problem articulated by B that society seems to be treating all women as pre-pregnant, but it's also that these public health messages are often delivered in a condescending manner and individual doctors can be just as bad.
There's a great passage in Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir An Unquiet Mind where she talks about the cruelty of one of her doctors. It isn't exactly on point, but I do think that it reflects a certain doctor knows best attitude which doesn't allow for a collaboration between the doctor and the patient. I think that it's worth quoting at length:
Many years ago, when I was living in Los Angeles, I went to a physician recommended to me by a colleague. After examining me, and after finding out that I had been on lithium for many years, he asked me an extended series of questions about my psychiatric history. He also asked me whether or not I planned to have children. Having generally been treated wih intelligence and compassion by my various doctors up to that point, I had no reason to be anything but direct about my extensive history of mania and depression, although I also made clear that I was, in the vernacular, a "good lithium responder." I told him that I very much wanted to have children, which immediately led to his asking me what I planned to do about taking lithium during my pregnancy. I started to tell him that it seemed obvious to me that the dangers of my illness far outweighed any potential problems that lithium might cause a developing fetus, and that I therefore would choose to stay on lithium. Before I finished, however, he broke in to ask me if I knew that manic-depressive illness was a genetic disease. Stifling for the moment an urge to remind him that I had spent my entire professional life studying manic-sepressive illness and that, in any event, I wasn't entirely stupid, I said, "Yes, of course." At that point, in an icy and imperious voice that I can hear to this day, he stated--as though it were God's truth, which he no doubt felt it was--"You shouldn't have children. You have manic-depressive illness."
I felt sick, unbelievably and utterly sick, and deeply humiliated. Determined to resist being provoked into what would, without question, be interpreted as irrational behavior, I asked him if his concerns about my having children stemmed from the fact that,because of my illness, he though tthat I would be an inadequate mother or simply that he thought it was best to avoid bringing another manic-depressive into the world. Ignoring or missing my sarcasm, he replied, "Both." I asked him to leave the room, put on the rest of my clothes, knocked on his office door, told him to go to hell, and left. I walked across the street to my car, sat down, shaking and sobbed until I was exhausted. brutality takes many forms and what he had done was not only brutal but unprofessional and uninformed. It did the kind of lasting damage that only something that cuts so quick and deep to the heart can do.
Talking to my husband about this in the car this morning, he came up with a brilliant new book title, "How To Relax While Your Fucking Expecting, Already!". Catchy, isn't it?
And be sure to eat lots of carrots because someone might make eye-babies with you on the subway.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:31 AM
Stuff like the hair dye myth starts with a tiny kernel of truth. Basically, some chemicals in some dyes when administered in very high doses in animal studies have displayed teratogenic effects. That this then gets extrapolated to "pregnant women shouldn't dye their hair" is ridiculous.
My favorite similar myth, "you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day."
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:36 AM
I saw a similar post on this via Ezra, and I don't really get this perspective. People are solicitous of pregnant people. They stop smoking around them, they offer their seats to them, etc. Sometimes they go overboard, and are intrusive, out of a complete absense of knowledge. But, in general, I'd think being solicitous of the pregnant was a good thing.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:39 AM
Ought we not also be solicitous of the pre-pregnant?
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:48 AM
Solicitous enough so I can't work out with a trainer? Solicitous enough that people lecture me for having a glass of wine in my seventh month, a time at which there is absolutely no evidence at all that light drinking has any harmful effect? That kind of solicitous people can shove where it will do the most good.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:49 AM
Each woman, man, and couple should be encouraged to have a reproductive life plan.
hahaha. If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:49 AM
(Note that it is illegal to be solicitous if you are a sex worker.)
Posted by The Modesto Kid | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:51 AM
Something to keep in mind, that Amanda M. pointed out over at Pandagon, the WaPo's article was horrendous. The actual CDC document really doesn't read the way the WaPo portrays it.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:52 AM
"Solicitous" is not a good word here, because it conflates "considerate" with "bossy". Since we have the word "considerate", meaning "solicitous but not intrusive and annoying", it makes more sense to say it is good that people are considerate of pregnant women but bad that people are bossy toward them, rather than pretending it is impossible to be pleasant to a pregnant woman without also acting as if you own her foetus.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:54 AM
Precisely. And Amanda is right about the report -- it really isn't nearly as bad as the WaPo article. I'm wondering if there's an intervening press release that explains the WaPo article.
I'm griping about the attitude toward pregnancy more than the report itself.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:56 AM
SCTM, I think there's a fine line between solicitous and paternalistic. You can have my seat on the subway is usually solicitous. My own son has some serius allergy problems (he's happy, but 2.5 year olds on daily medication is not fun). One person saying that if my wife had eaten differently this wouldn't have happened was enough to create a Category IV guilt event. A totally unnecessary one by my estimation.
My own thought is whether this is the sort of health guidelines that would, in this administration, be issued for any other class of people.
Posted by benton | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:57 AM
Is this really that different from reports that say the population in general should stop smoking, should exercise, and should eat healthily? Considering how many births are the result of unplanned pregancies, this is probably a good thing.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 8:58 AM
Yes it is, because it suggests buggering around with epilepsy medication and such like for women, on the basis that even if they're not pregnant and don't plan to be, they're pre pregnant.
Look at it this way; if the US government advised all of its citizens to maintain something like a military level of fitness, because after all you could be conscripted at any minute so we are all in a very real sense "pre-draftees", would that not be a bit creepy? It is specifically breaking the Kantian rule by not treating women as ends in themselves but as potential baby factories.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:03 AM
it makes more sense to say it is good that people are considerate of pregnant women but bad that people are bossy toward them, rather than pretending it is impossible to be pleasant to a pregnant woman without also acting as if you own her foetus.
I agree. But it strikes me that it's not that uncommon for people to feel an obligation to some kid they don't know, and to doubt a parent's fitness. I remember being on some subway and seeing a mom absolutely slap the shit out of her kid for some infraction. I didn't say anything on the "not my kid" principle, but someone else did, and at the time I was glad they did.
Also, I'm coming from this from the other side. At one time, it used to annoy the hell out of me that society seemed bent on creating a child-friendly world everywhere. So I might be overinfluenced by a sense of what "not considerate" might mean.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:08 AM
13 is exactly right.
Posted by Adam Kotsko | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:14 AM
Actually, even the military preparedness analogy is too weak; it's like if McDonalds were to issue a press release advising everyone to have their hair cut a certain way and not get tattoos because between the ages of 18 and 65 we are all potential burger-flippers.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:16 AM
Yes it is, because it suggests buggering around with epilepsy medication and such like for women
Uh... is it *actually* suggesting this, or do you just think it's a logical conclusion of the attitude? These are medical professionals, not right-to-life lunatics. As Ezra's post pointed out, this seems to me simply to be a fairly sane if a bit starry-eyed wishlist.
It would be nice if women who might accidentally get pregnant stayed relatively healthy. Similarly, it would be nice if the guy sitting next to me on an airplane remained trim enough to not spill into my seat. If I were a professional travel-advice-dispenser, I'd say that sure, ideally everyone would remain in a coach-class-ready state, and here's how. There's no particularly good reason not to be. But nobody's going to force you.
I can understand how any attempt to point out the biological impact women have on their infants may be greeted with hostility -- it's just a step away from assigning them legal responsibility for fetal well-being, after all. But in this case we're only talking about babies brought to term. And insofar as nobody's denying that the report's recommendations are true, I'm not sure what's to be gained by getting pissed off about them. You're welcome to take em or leave em, of course.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:19 AM
I think you and B are way, way off on this, LB. These guidelines and outreach programs are intended for an audience that includes women who don't know and are difficult to reach—the message must be clear and repetitive. It's the CDC's job to reach women who aren't reading blogs, and if in doing so they offend mothers who already know better, I don't know. Seems like an acceptable risk.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:22 AM
This is just a symptom of the general problem of people being completely bonkers about kids and safety.
In 1970 you didn't even have to put a kid in a car seat, and somehow most of us made it through the day. Nowadays, if you let them watch more than 30 minutes of Blues Clues you're going to give them ADHD and destroy their life.
Car seats and lots of other things ARE of course good ideas, but people seem to lose sight of the fact that we are all healthier, longer-lived, and safer than at pretty much any other time in history.
Re-f*ckin-lax!
Posted by skippy | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:25 AM
My high school English teacher's daughter is head of the CDC.
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:34 AM
Hmm. Just saw someone's stupid but not-outrageously-evil comment get deleted (it was a not very funny joke about sterilization). What gives?
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:38 AM
tom, its the Troll of Sorrow. If you have questions, email me, but let's not discuss it further on the blog.
Posted by Tia | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:43 AM
Gotcha. In that case nevermind, and feel free to delete this comment and the one prompting your answer.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:47 AM
I am wondering who is targeted by this movement. I already feel like every time I go to the gyno, I have to justify every sexual and nonreproductive decision I've ever made and get catechized on the comparative effectiveness of birth control. My guess is this is meant to target women who do not go to the gyno at all (because, fucking DUH, they don't have health insurance) by making it a commonplace (or "meme," if you will) to call all women "pre-pregnant." Sounds to me like yet another way to get around that pesky providing-health-care business by belitting women and poor people.
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 9:55 AM
another way to get around that pesky providing-health-care business by belitting women and poor people.
Yes, universal health care would do wonders for the health of poorer people, but the CDC can't provide it. I don't see how providing useful information to people who would otherwise have little way to access it is belittling them.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:01 AM
Being called "pre-pregnant" is belittling, for the reasons outlined in 13, and also for the reason the Bitch states on her blog -- why not focus on the health of the women themselves, instead of the health of non-existent children those women might one day have if they fulfilled their human duty?
Posted by A White Bear | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:10 AM
Who says CDC isn't also focusing on women's health?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:17 AM
26: Pre-natal health, though related to women's health in general, is not the same thing. There is value in giving advice related specifically to pregnancy.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:26 AM
26: Except that the CDC appears to be worried about women who (a) accidently get pregnant, and (b) will still want the kid. To the extent that a significant percentage of kept pregnancies are accidental, a significant percentage of fertile women are pre-pregnant.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:27 AM
16: I don't know about the McDonald's analogy. How often do you 1) become a burger flipper without knowing about it for several weeks to a month, and 2) accidentally apply for and get hired in a job as a burger flipper? I know Ambien had caused people to sleep-eat, but that would be a new one. Always practice safe job interviewing.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:35 AM
To the extent that a significant percentage of kept pregnancies are accidental, a significant percentage of fertile women are pre-pregnant
And to the extent that "a significant percentage" multiplied by "a significant percentage", multiplied by the actual risk factor of some of the things they are talking about is a number so close to zero that God Almighty would be putting his reading glasses on to see the difference, this approach to public health is ridiculous.
Read the thing; it's linked above. They are genuinely talking about encouraging doctors not to prescribe certain medicines for "pre-pregnant" women with epilepsy, because they are risk factors for certain prenatal conditions. That really is an appalling approach to public health, because it is refusing to deal with the patient as an individual who might or might not want to get pregnant.
Look people. This is an administration with no track record at all in coming up with good public health policies, and a track record as long as your arm in coming up with sleazy little ways to exercise control over women. Why on earth would it be rational to give them the benefit of the doubt in this case? Just as someone snatching a drink out of a pregnant woman's hand might be a genuinely concerned medical professional who is concerned that the woman might be unaware of the risk factors of foetal alcohol syndrome, but nine times out of ten or more, is just a busybody little fuckhead.
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:39 AM
Let's separate the government policy from the annoying attitudes of individuals. Is this not a reasonable approach to getting more support for universal health care, which would benefits far outweighing the fact that some nutsos consider you a baby vessel?
People are always saying pro-lifers are actually just anti-sexers, because they only care about teh baby sex- when reports come out showing things like the US has the 2nd worst infant mortality of industrialized nations (take that, Latvia!) we wonder where are the religious nuts who care about things besides sex. Well, this might be a good way to approach that problem- if you let the conservatives think universal health care is the right thing because it makes for good baby vessels, who cares what their motives are if they'll support good health care for everyone?
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:41 AM
"My favorite similar myth, "you need to drink 8 glasses of water a day.""
Link, please? I googled it, and I don't see any contradictory sources. (Except for the ones that say you need to drink a half ounce a day for each pound of body weight, which ends up being 10 8-oz glasses if you weight 160 lbs or 8 if you weight 128.)
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:42 AM
Hmm. Slightly better googling returns some hits like this and this.
Posted by pdf23ds | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:45 AM
which would benefits far outweighing the fact that some nutsos consider you a baby vessel?
No. I refuse to play that game: "Come on, if you let people treat you like an incubator, then everyone will be better off." Then next week it's "Come on, we can get a decent level of income support for families in need if you play along; you didn't really want to be allowed to work outside the home, did you?"
Dsquared is completely right -- I'd missed the epilepsy drugs thing on my first pass through the recommendations.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:45 AM
31: a number so close to zero
Well, half of all pregancies in this country are unplanned (and the rate is far higher for women in poverty), and the effects of smoking and folic acid deficiency, etc. is pretty well demonstarted, so the impact here is probably quite a bit higher than zero.
Also, re: epliepsy drugs, the report just says that "women...who are contemplating pregnancy should be prescribed a lower dosage of these drugs". It doesn't say they shouldn't take them, and it limits this recommendation to those who are seeking to become pregnant. It is not a universal recommendation.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:50 AM
Is this not a reasonable approach to getting more support for universal health care
Well put it this way; was it put together by a) Aneurin Bevan, b) Michael Moore, c) Hillary Clinton or d) an arm of government managed by the Republican Party?
Posted by dsquared | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:50 AM
Being called "pre-pregnant"
I thought the proper misconstruction would be "unpregnant".
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:52 AM
Aside from my mangled syntax, I meant it as a persuasive method, not something where you actually make concessions to be treated like an incubator. Tell one set of people, "Here's universal healthcare because it's the right thing economically, etc." Tell another set of people, "Universal healthcare is necessary because otherwise lots of babies will die and make Jesus cry." They agree on the outcome, but with different motivations for supporting it. (Obviously none of the "women are incubators" stuff is written into law.)
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:52 AM
19 gets it exactly right
Posted by fiend | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:55 AM
37: Actually, I'm not sure, I'd have to do more research than I have time for. It was put together by the CDC, which has political appointees at its head but a lot of career professionals. You'd have to find out the backgrounds of the authors. Who knows, maybe it was slipped in there by some libruls but couched in language sure to get it past their Republican overlords. It's like reading Pravda.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 10:57 AM
Uh, yes and of course it is wrong to treat women as mere vessels for the production of children. And of course, to the extent that is what the CDC has done, it is very bad.
But is the most reasonable way to view what they have done? Might it be nothing more than assuming that most people are concerned about the health of their children and that as a service to those people and their health-care providers and to address those people's needs, they are trying to provide those women with information so that those people and their healthcare providers can make informed choices about things that are important to them? Why does is this such a horrible thing? I thought we liked providing people with information so that they could make informed choices about their lives.
Yes, of course, it would be terrible if the Govenment told women that they had a duty to keep themselves ready to be "baby-vessels," but I missed it in the report where it says this.
Posted by Idealist | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 11:20 AM
They're talking about avoiding the prescription of effective epilepsy medications to fertile women
LB, this isn't really accurate. The report itself states:
They're not talking about all fertile women, just those who are likely to become pregnant. And even for the people this recommendation is aimed at, they aren't saying "don't take the drugs", they're just advising a lower dose. Insofar as these drugs pose some risk to a fetus (which could be b.s., but I'm taking it at face value here), I'm not seeing the problem with informing women of the risk.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 11:40 AM
It's like reading Pravda.
???
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 11:42 AM
Dsqured, I love you.
The rest of y'all suck.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 11:43 AM
39: right, we're supposed to reinforce a cultural view of women as baby incubators? easy for you to say, sperm-can.
what bitch said.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:13 PM
I think I've got to side with 'Smasher and the others who are making the more benign outreach/education interpretation.
God knows I sympathize with the more cynical take, and it was my first response as well, reading over the report itself doesn't seem to justify that response, I think, unless you're really looking for it.
Looking at some of the other publications of the primary authors, we have things like:
Taylor VM, Tompson B, Lessler D, Yasui y, Montano D, Johnson KM, Mahloch J, Mullen M, Li S, Bassett G, Goldberg HI. A clinic-based mammography internvention targeting inner city women. J Gen Intern Med 1999; 14:104-111.
and
High Prevalence of Self-Reported Forced Sexual Intercourse Among Internally Displaced Women in Azerbaijan (by Samuel Posner).
And the other authors are from various organizations, that seem to be on the side of the angels here. That is, they do seem to care about the health of women, as women, not simply as baby-vessels, and I think reading the report confirms that women's health in and of itself is a large motivation behind the recommendations.
In other words, yes, Republican asshats are busbody little fuckers, and they are littered about the FDA, and perhaps the CDC as well. But I don't think any of them wrote this report. I think the folks who DID write the report, would be surprised and disappointed by the more cynical interpretations of it.
Posted by Carl | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:22 PM
I sympathize with the more cynical take
It's not cynicism to recognize that even well-intentioned projects undertaken by good people can be pernicious in effect.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:30 PM
But Carl, talk about your intentional fallacies. No one is saying that the authors of the study are evil people. We're talking about the rhetoric and effects of the piece.
And y'll will notice that LB made a point *in the post* of distinguishing between the recommendations and the rhetoric. Jeez. Pay attention.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:35 PM
44- Under the Soviets, you often had to read between the lines in USSR newspapers to figure out what was really going on. Sometimes by seeing what was omitted (Paper says everything is great in Moscow and Leningrad- so what bad thing happened in Kiev?); sometimes to try to pick up a subversive message that an author tried to sneak through the censors. I'm making a comparison to the latter in this case.
Posted by SP | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:44 PM
Fine then, but I haven't seen anyone waving this report around going, "Round up the women, get them their folic acid! They are the vessels of the next generation! The doctors said so!" I'm not insensitive to the rhetorical effects, and yes, we're living in a very chilling environment at the moment when it comes to women's and their sexual and physical autonomy. . . but, your argument about rhetorical effects quickly becomes reductio ad absurdum. You can't tell doctors not to think about and make recommendations about the health of women and infants because it might be used by conservatives to limit women's freedom.
So, yes, if the report is being used by anyone to that rhetorical effect, please point those people out, and I'll join you in condeming them, but condeming the CDC or the authors of the report seems misguided to me.
Posted by Carl | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:48 PM
50: Yay! The benefit of the Bush administration is that it'll teach us all to be more careful readers.
51: The WaPo is. And again, no one *is* condemning the authors of the report, I don't think, or the CDC. Criticizing, maybe, in a limited way. And no one is telling doctors not to think about women's health, either.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:50 PM
And I don't think my take on it is any more of an intentional fallacy than the assumption that the report embodies a "social attitude toward pregnant women" that "pisses LB off" (and you as well it seems).
Posted by Carl | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:53 PM
And again, no one *is* condemning the authors of the report, I don't think, or the CDC. Criticizing, maybe, in a limited way.
This seems to be a rhetorical stand-down from the post on your own site, which seems to conflate the report with the "federal government" treating women as "biological" specimens, etc. Which I think slanders pretty well-intentioned work.
Posted by Carl | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 12:57 PM
Fair enough w/r/t LB's post and the stuff re. the CDC. The social attitude that women are primarily baby-factories *does* piss me off. I don't think that's what the CDC report is getting at, though. As distinct from the WaPo coverage ofo the CDC report, which is. And, I think, is attributing that attitude to the CDC, though whether this is because the WaPo are idiots or because they're cynically trying to create interest in their article, I can't say.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 1:00 PM
Carl, I've updated my site. Slander, shmander. The post you refer to is quoting the WaPo. If there's slander, it's they, not I, who are responsible for it.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 1:04 PM
54: Check BPhD's site for her latest post on it -- her earlier post relied on the WaPo as a fair representation of the contents of the report, which it really wasn't.
Look, the real piss-off here is the social attitude toward pregnant women described in my post. In the context of that attitude (which, trust me, exists and is powerful) a report which takes the general position that women should consider themselves potentially pregnant during their entire fertile lifespan (regardless of the sanity of the particular recommendations) is also going to be irritating. It evokes the spectre of being treated for most of my life with the condescending busybodydom I was treated with throughout my pregnancies.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 1:04 PM
What bitchphd said in 49.
And, just to note, people have been having this argument ever since the Clinton-era CDC first published its recommendations.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 1:05 PM
Anyway, *can* you slander a government? Isn't criticising the government still legal?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 1:08 PM
55: We can't think of you as baby factories. We can't think of you as breasts on stick. What's left? And is it any wonder men feel confused?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 1:08 PM
I'm going to have you killed, Tim.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 1:11 PM
In the context of that attitude (which, trust me, exists and is powerful)
I've never seen this attitude. Aren't you overreacting?
[Runs for the hills, ducking and dodging]
Posted by Chopper | Link to this comment | 05-17-06 1:12 PM
Well, I want to agree with dsquared about the awfulness of the recommendations w/r/t the anti-epileptic drugs. The ob/gyn portion of teh medical establishment often treats psychiatric patients the same way, many of whom are taking those same anticonvulsants. Many ob/gyns are ignorant of the studies done on psychiatric patients taking anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs. The short answer is that there are risks, that they vary from drug to drug, but that those risks need to be balanced against the real risks posed to a fetus by untreated illness. Moreover, even a pregnant woman is more than just a womb and her health has value in its own right.
I told you all before about the student health services doctor who told me loudly on what was essentially an open ward that I needed to get an IUD, because one fo the drugs that I was taking was so dangerous to a fetus that it would be disastrous if I ever got pregnant on them. I didn't want to get pregnant (thought it would be disastrous for other reasons) and didn't have a boyfriend at the time (so it was moot), but she was ill-informed and condescending. Part of it is the problem articulated by B that society seems to be treating all women as pre-pregnant, but it's also that these public health messages are often delivered in a condescending manner and individual doctors can be just as bad.
There's a great passage in Kay Redfield Jamison's memoir An Unquiet Mind where she talks about the cruelty of one of her doctors. It isn't exactly on point, but I do think that it reflects a certain doctor knows best attitude which doesn't allow for a collaboration between the doctor and the patient. I think that it's worth quoting at length:
Posted by Bostoniangirl | Link to this comment | 05-18-06 3:41 AM
We can't think of you as breasts on stick.
Mmmmm. Breasts on a stick.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 05-18-06 4:00 AM
Aren't you overreacting?
Or reading too much into it?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 05-18-06 5:05 AM
Talking to my husband about this in the car this morning, he came up with a brilliant new book title, "How To Relax While Your Fucking Expecting, Already!". Catchy, isn't it?
Posted by Victoria Winters | Link to this comment | 05-18-06 7:37 AM
I'm going to have you killed, Tim.
Don't reify the patriarchal notion of women as disabled by their gender, B. (See, e.g., Lady McBeth.) Kill me yourself.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 05-18-06 7:44 AM
66 was great. "The Girlfriend's guide to being in the Pregnancy Ready Reserve."
Posted by benton | Link to this comment | 05-18-06 8:14 AM
Don't reify the patriarchal notion of women as disabled by their gender, B. (See, e.g., Lady McBeth.) Kill me yourself.
Maybe she's going to have it done by Cala, the Unfogged designated sniper.
Posted by gswift | Link to this comment | 05-18-06 8:25 AM