{"id":306442,"date":"2024-02-07T08:52:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-07T14:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=306442"},"modified":"2024-02-06T14:54:24","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T20:54:24","slug":"bioethics-journal-calls-pregnancy-disease","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/bioethics-journal-calls-pregnancy-disease\/","title":{"rendered":"Bioethics journal argues pregnancy is a ‘disease’ like the measles"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(National Review<\/a>) The <\/span>Journal of Medical Ethics<\/span><\/i> is one of the preeminent bioethics journals in the world. So, when an article appears in the publication that is subversive to human decency and basic morality, notice needs to be taken.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c<\/span>Is pregnancy a disease<\/span><\/a>?\u201d the article\u2019s title asks. Why yes, yes, it is, the authors answer.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, they depict pregnancy as if the gestating baby were a tumor:<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine a patient who visits the doctor having an abdominal mass that is increasing in size, causing pain, vomiting and displacement of other internal organs. Tests are booked, and investigations are planned. But when the patient mentions that she has missed her period, these alarming symptoms suddenly become trivial. She is pregnant!<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The authors don\u2019t care that pregnancy is a normal part of life and necessary for the human race to continue. Rather, they compare being with child, as the old saying went, to contracting the <\/span>measles<\/span><\/i>:<\/span><\/p>\n

We can compare pregnancy with measles. Measles is uncontroversially regarded as a disease and treated as such by public health authorities and health professionals. Measles is harmful to nearly all of those who catch it. However, most patients will survive. Very few will die, and only a small proportion will go on to experience longer term impacts on their health. So how do the risks of pregnancy compare against those of measles?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Like measles, pregnancy is a self-limiting condition. It follows a predictable trajectory that usually ends in the patient\u2019s recovery. Both pregnancy and measles also involve symptoms that can impair one\u2019s normal functional ability. Common symptoms experienced during pregnancy include: back pain, bleeding gums, headaches, heartburn and indigestion, leaking from the nipples, nosebleeds, pelvic pain, piles, stomach pain, stretch marks, swollen ankles, feet and fingers, tiredness and sleep problems, thrush, vaginal bleeding, vaginal discharge, vomiting, morning sickness and weight gain. Like many diseases, including measles, pregnancy is a condition that has distinct stages. The first stage of pregnancy commonly involves many of the symptoms described above. The second stage\u2014labour\u2014will usually involve extreme pain, powerful cramps, and the ripping, stretching and damaging of tissue. This second stage is far riskier than the first, in terms of long-term threats to life and health.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

In other words, the developing child is the equivalent of a pathogen.<\/span><\/p>\n

But isn\u2019t pregnancy a normal part of human life? No! Because most people can\u2019t get pregnant \u2014 i.e., males and females not of child-bearing age:<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently, there are approximately 1.8\u2009billion such women [of child-bearing age] in existence. But there are only around 211\u2009million pregnancies yearly. Thus, the norm for people in this group is not to be pregnant. Based purely on numbers, pregnancy is abnormal, even within the narrowest target group we can define. So can we really insist that pregnancy constitutes \u2018normal species function\u2019 when most of the people in the target group are not pregnant?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Oh, the sophistry!<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthering their thesis, the authors claim that childbirth is so traumatic, humans may one day go extinct:<\/span><\/p>\n

We are a species that has been around for an extraordinarily short period of time in evolutionary terms. Human childbirth is significantly more painful, protracted, and lethal than delivery in other mammal species. As noted, gender equality leads to plummeting birthdates, perhaps precisely because human birth is so traumatic for the human body, and is incompatible with many other goods that humans value. We cannot infer from our existence now that we are equipped to survive indefinitely, nor that reproduction will continue as we know it.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

But what about infertility? The inability to conceive is treated as a disease \u2014 <\/span>even for same-sex couples<\/span><\/a> \u2014 access to the \u201ctreatments\u201d for which (i.e., IVF, surrogacy, etc.) is becoming a civil right.<\/span><\/p>\n