With child, without...
This article I was reading yesterday on CBC's news site describes how eating (entirely inordinate amounts of) hormone-filled beef whilst pregnant may have an effect on a male fetus' sperm count.
Aside from my initial reaction of "well, good" (I'll leave the population rant for another day), I also got the feeling that this article and others like it have a very anti-female-autonomy agenda despite their apparent neutrality. So, when studies reveal that hormones and other crap in factory farm meat are crazy bad for you in ways you may not even realize, instead of condemning whomever deemed this poison fit to eat, the media spins it as an issue of pregnant women harming their fetuses.
Measures to control pregnant women and their bodies are rampant in Canadian health care policy and practices, and although they are often camouflaged as medical advice or routine prenatal care, there is a danger that women's ability to make personal choices about their health while pregnant may be usurped by the state in the form of criminal sanctions. Right now, the Manitoba Liquor Control Commission has an initiative called "With Child Without Alcohol," and last month the federal health minister introduced a National Healthy Pregnancy Campaign. Even before they become pregnant, women are encouraged to take supplements such as folic acid in order to render their wombs habitable for not-yet-conceived progeny.
This conception (no pun intended) of all fertile women as either pregnant or pre-pregnant (an actual term used by the US government, I shit you not) is really not such a far cry from the Japanese health minister who referred to his nation's women as "birth-giving machines." At this point, because a fetus is not defined by the Criminal Code as a living being with legal rights (and I remember studying and debating the SCC case of Winnipeg Child and Family Services v. G. (D.F.). which decided the issue while raising as many questions as it answered) there is no authority for the government to punish pregnant women for their health choices. However, the subtle inroads into personal autonomy that we see now are a worrisome trend, and it is often the case that social pressure and access to information and resources may be as influential, if not more, as the law of the land.
To paraphrase someone clever whose name I can't recall, any amount of highway driving may be hazardous to a fetus' health, but you don't see graphic and disturbing warning labels on steering wheels...
2 comments:
Wait ... it sounds as though you're a proponent of drinking while pregnant. I can fully see your point about women making their own choices, it's their child/body, etc ... but FAS is a scientifically proven condition. Other "doing -blank- while pregnant may cause..." are more esoteric/oblique, but you really can't argue that educating women (Manitoban women, no less ... I'm just sayin') about the dangers of drinking while pregnant is a bad idea.
And wouldn't it be "whomever deems the poison fit to eat"?
Sure, sure, I understand that the alcohol abuse/FAS (or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder as it's now evidently called) link is sound medicine, and that's exactly the point. Any woman who is going to heed the WCWA initiative (Manitobans included!) is one that already knows that excessive alcohol consumption can harm a fetus. Alcoholics, drug addicts, and other people in compromised health situations aren't going to just sit up, view the flashy website, and change their habits overnight.
Rather than scolding troubled mothers into "behaving," it'd be a lot more effective to provide a support network so that the economic, social, and medical resources are in place to assist with the larger problem.
Further, the issue also ties into access to abortion. This is speculation, but I would bet that alot of the children born with alcohol-related health problems weren't planned pregnancies.
In addition to excessive alcohol (and in Europe it's commonly accepted that a glass or two of wine is quite alright while pregnant), there are numerous sources of harm to developing fetuses: motor vehicle accidents, as noted; spousal abuse; fatty foods; smoking...the list goes on and on. If every potential harm were to be regulated, you'd have to take all expectant mothers and institutionalize them for nine months.
Finally, I wouldn't say I'm a proponent of getting knocked up and wasted, and education's never a bad thing, but it really does have to end at the information stage. Provide people with the full health picture and then step back to let them make their own choices, good or bad.
Grammar point duly noted :)
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