Doctors need to do more to prevent maternal mortality for sure. The fact that they start with sterilizing women vs. perfecting their craft is mind boggling.
The pressure for birth control postpartum is not what people ordinarily think of as “choice.”
I read a story online where a woman was accosted by six nurses at her postpartum appointment encouraging her to use birth control; she wanted to use natural family planning.
It’s between a woman and her doctor. 🤣
And the part that gets me is when they say that there are women who don’t know about birth control. But I have never met a women’s healthcare practitioner not gaga over birth control, and I do not believe that anyone who uses modern medicine hasn’t been pressured to use it. Knights in shining armor. 🤣
And the fear mongering about the dangers of an unwanted baby over 45. It is technically possible, but being afraid of an improbable miracle baby is not well-adjusted.
This is so true! It has almost become an obligation. Real risks are minimized and women are infantilized and not given a choice by a paternalistic system.
So much for women's health. So much for choice... They don't even perceive the irony.
The sterility culture is so strong that choosing to embrace fertility is rejecting the default, and being contrarian. There is an almost impossible burden to defend it. But physically, historically, that’s the reality. It makes my brain hurt every time I try to figure it out. Everyone should have freedom to do what they feel. But why is there this overpowering pressure and a gaslighting when that’s our how bodies work and that’s how humans have mostly lived since the dawn of time?
Not preventing fertility is some extremist thread of an already extreme perspective that must not be spoken in polite company. But isn’t that just naturally how things are?
And how is pushing away life something to get sanctimonious about?
It doesn’t resonate with me.
The cognitive dissonance.
I have a burden on my soul. And I am convinced that no human being anywhere will understand.
I am certainly not anti-capitalist, nor do I think that communism or socialism are good alternatives to capitalism. I think we need to expand our thinking on economic matters. Chesterton and Belloc talked a lot about distributism, and I think we would do well to explore their ideas further. There have to be ways to integrate respect for Natural Law into our economy. We have to do the work to make it happen.
Excellent essay! Isn’t telling how so much of what the role offers as “free info and “liberating” turns around to enslave us instead?
One small quibble— and perhaps we will agree to disagree— I do not think the push for the “responsibility” of female infertility is solely on capitalism. To be sure, many things, like predictability, have been favored by a capitalist systems that encourages a system of workers to have less of a balance between work and life. But I do not think this is a capitalist problem only. In many regards, capitalism driving both innovation and wealth has freed many women (and men) from the intensive labor needed to take care of a household- washing clothes, fixing food, cleaning, are all much less labor-intensive that ever before. I do not think that is such a bad thing, necessarily. But everything comes with trade-offs. Less time to wash clothes and fix dinner left women with more time to potentially pursue a career, but the career took her outside the home, and at least when she was washing, cleaning, and cooking, she was around her children. Which is better? I’m not sure, but I know I’d rather not go back to washing my clothes in a bucket with a washboard, personally.
Communism and socialism though are systems just as interested as some capitalists in keeping women as predictable workers, they simply use different incentives to do it- rather than enticing them with earning their own money, they are encouraged to work for the “greater good” of all society. All fine and dandy, until you realize that it’s the government oligarchs that decide what is best for the society. Communism/socialism still needs a labor force that won’t be flexible to women’s fertility. Or, it could go the other way and relegate all women to only their unpredictable fertility, seeing women as important to society for only their reproductive roles, for the “greater good.”
Capitalism has one advantage the others don’t, even if this advantage has not been utilized enough. At this point, capitalism has grown our country’s wealth and innovation enough that woman know have more options to balance work and life than before. Capitalism encourages entrepreneurship that gives women the option to find work that CAN flex with their own unpredictable fertility. Although the original work systems didn’t have this flexibility, that wasn’t build into capitalism, it was just a byproduct of how a capitalist society figured out the most productive way to organize industrial jobs followed by corporate jobs. Capitalism allows the freedom and flexibility to rearrange itself— communism or socialism does not.
So while we can point out mechanisms like firms initially not wanting to hire women who could get pregnant and have to take a leave of absence, and show that such attitudes did indeed led to this harnessing of women’s fertility for the sake of career— I also think that some of the answers to this quagmire can be found without upending our capitalist system altogether.
I recognize that you aren’t necessarily calling for that— but sometimes the mention of these mechanisms with the description of “capitalist” has some people think then that the problem lies within capitalism itself. I think it’s much deeper than that. It doesn’t matter what economic system you are in, there is a tendency for society to either put women in a box of only motherhood, or into another box of excluding motherhood. The only system I can see that did this the least (but still some) might be agricultural way of life, only because the woman’s work was at home, alongside the work at home with her husband and with their children. We can learn from this, but we also should have any naive overly-romanticized notions that the whole economy is going to go back to sustenance family farming.
I appreciate the way you layed out your case that shows how our society has come to see a woman’s superpower as a burden to both her and society. That is deeply troubling to me. And not the way I think God intended it to be.
East Germany (communism) had more women who worked outside the home than West Germany (capitalism) when Germany was reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
“The harsh reality is that the powers that be, including the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Medical Association, and the United States Government promote hormonal birth control despite the known physical and mental health risks because they see women’s procreative power as a bigger threat than the possibility of killing or injuring women.”
Redefining pregnancy and childbirth as conditions likely to end in death or significant injury clears this one up.
Keeping women from pregnancy and childbirth *is* saving women from death in childbirth and/or pregnancy related deaths and permanent illnesses.
I am a walking miracle. Having survived childbirth more than once. 💫
Well I for one am eternally grateful that I was able to control my fertility, and will fight anyone who tries to take that ability away. Nobody ever pushed it on me, I like many women demanded it. All drugs have side effects and doctors should be up front about risks, but I have absolutely zero desire to embrace risk of unwanted pregnancy OR the dysmenorrhea that I treated with hormonal bc for years. Your argument seems to completely ignore female agency and how many of us *want* these products.
That’s the point, Dave. Women are typically not given fully informed consent. And their fertility is treated like a disease instead of a sign of health.
The birth control mindset that separates sex from procreation leads to more abortion, not less. There are consequences for trying to contravene Natural Law.
I am opposed to birth control on a philosophical level. Sex has both a procreative and unitive dimension and separating the two heads quickly towards using the other.
I am particularly opposed to hormonal birth control methods and devices because, in addition to the moral, spiritual, and psychological harm done to both parties, there are added medical risks for the woman that are unacceptable and tolerated without much thought by our society.
Fertility is definitely treated like a disease in much of mainstream "women's health."
Doctors need to do more to prevent maternal mortality for sure. The fact that they start with sterilizing women vs. perfecting their craft is mind boggling.
One would think fertility was a disease, instead of the norm. I'm so glad you wrote this. Thank you!
The pressure for birth control postpartum is not what people ordinarily think of as “choice.”
I read a story online where a woman was accosted by six nurses at her postpartum appointment encouraging her to use birth control; she wanted to use natural family planning.
It’s between a woman and her doctor. 🤣
And the part that gets me is when they say that there are women who don’t know about birth control. But I have never met a women’s healthcare practitioner not gaga over birth control, and I do not believe that anyone who uses modern medicine hasn’t been pressured to use it. Knights in shining armor. 🤣
And the fear mongering about the dangers of an unwanted baby over 45. It is technically possible, but being afraid of an improbable miracle baby is not well-adjusted.
This is so true! It has almost become an obligation. Real risks are minimized and women are infantilized and not given a choice by a paternalistic system.
So much for women's health. So much for choice... They don't even perceive the irony.
The sterility culture is so strong that choosing to embrace fertility is rejecting the default, and being contrarian. There is an almost impossible burden to defend it. But physically, historically, that’s the reality. It makes my brain hurt every time I try to figure it out. Everyone should have freedom to do what they feel. But why is there this overpowering pressure and a gaslighting when that’s our how bodies work and that’s how humans have mostly lived since the dawn of time?
Not preventing fertility is some extremist thread of an already extreme perspective that must not be spoken in polite company. But isn’t that just naturally how things are?
And how is pushing away life something to get sanctimonious about?
It doesn’t resonate with me.
The cognitive dissonance.
I have a burden on my soul. And I am convinced that no human being anywhere will understand.
I can’t make sense of it.
I am certainly not anti-capitalist, nor do I think that communism or socialism are good alternatives to capitalism. I think we need to expand our thinking on economic matters. Chesterton and Belloc talked a lot about distributism, and I think we would do well to explore their ideas further. There have to be ways to integrate respect for Natural Law into our economy. We have to do the work to make it happen.
Excellent essay! Isn’t telling how so much of what the role offers as “free info and “liberating” turns around to enslave us instead?
One small quibble— and perhaps we will agree to disagree— I do not think the push for the “responsibility” of female infertility is solely on capitalism. To be sure, many things, like predictability, have been favored by a capitalist systems that encourages a system of workers to have less of a balance between work and life. But I do not think this is a capitalist problem only. In many regards, capitalism driving both innovation and wealth has freed many women (and men) from the intensive labor needed to take care of a household- washing clothes, fixing food, cleaning, are all much less labor-intensive that ever before. I do not think that is such a bad thing, necessarily. But everything comes with trade-offs. Less time to wash clothes and fix dinner left women with more time to potentially pursue a career, but the career took her outside the home, and at least when she was washing, cleaning, and cooking, she was around her children. Which is better? I’m not sure, but I know I’d rather not go back to washing my clothes in a bucket with a washboard, personally.
Communism and socialism though are systems just as interested as some capitalists in keeping women as predictable workers, they simply use different incentives to do it- rather than enticing them with earning their own money, they are encouraged to work for the “greater good” of all society. All fine and dandy, until you realize that it’s the government oligarchs that decide what is best for the society. Communism/socialism still needs a labor force that won’t be flexible to women’s fertility. Or, it could go the other way and relegate all women to only their unpredictable fertility, seeing women as important to society for only their reproductive roles, for the “greater good.”
Capitalism has one advantage the others don’t, even if this advantage has not been utilized enough. At this point, capitalism has grown our country’s wealth and innovation enough that woman know have more options to balance work and life than before. Capitalism encourages entrepreneurship that gives women the option to find work that CAN flex with their own unpredictable fertility. Although the original work systems didn’t have this flexibility, that wasn’t build into capitalism, it was just a byproduct of how a capitalist society figured out the most productive way to organize industrial jobs followed by corporate jobs. Capitalism allows the freedom and flexibility to rearrange itself— communism or socialism does not.
So while we can point out mechanisms like firms initially not wanting to hire women who could get pregnant and have to take a leave of absence, and show that such attitudes did indeed led to this harnessing of women’s fertility for the sake of career— I also think that some of the answers to this quagmire can be found without upending our capitalist system altogether.
I recognize that you aren’t necessarily calling for that— but sometimes the mention of these mechanisms with the description of “capitalist” has some people think then that the problem lies within capitalism itself. I think it’s much deeper than that. It doesn’t matter what economic system you are in, there is a tendency for society to either put women in a box of only motherhood, or into another box of excluding motherhood. The only system I can see that did this the least (but still some) might be agricultural way of life, only because the woman’s work was at home, alongside the work at home with her husband and with their children. We can learn from this, but we also should have any naive overly-romanticized notions that the whole economy is going to go back to sustenance family farming.
I appreciate the way you layed out your case that shows how our society has come to see a woman’s superpower as a burden to both her and society. That is deeply troubling to me. And not the way I think God intended it to be.
East Germany (communism) had more women who worked outside the home than West Germany (capitalism) when Germany was reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
That doesn’t surprise me! Thanks for sharing that fact!
I’ve never heard the phrase “she got herself pregnant” but I agree with everything else you said!
Well that’s good! I’m glad you haven’t. Such a ridiculous phrase.
“The harsh reality is that the powers that be, including the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the American Medical Association, and the United States Government promote hormonal birth control despite the known physical and mental health risks because they see women’s procreative power as a bigger threat than the possibility of killing or injuring women.”
Redefining pregnancy and childbirth as conditions likely to end in death or significant injury clears this one up.
Keeping women from pregnancy and childbirth *is* saving women from death in childbirth and/or pregnancy related deaths and permanent illnesses.
I am a walking miracle. Having survived childbirth more than once. 💫
Well I for one am eternally grateful that I was able to control my fertility, and will fight anyone who tries to take that ability away. Nobody ever pushed it on me, I like many women demanded it. All drugs have side effects and doctors should be up front about risks, but I have absolutely zero desire to embrace risk of unwanted pregnancy OR the dysmenorrhea that I treated with hormonal bc for years. Your argument seems to completely ignore female agency and how many of us *want* these products.
The pill beats abortion. Women will decide. As they should.
That’s the point, Dave. Women are typically not given fully informed consent. And their fertility is treated like a disease instead of a sign of health.
The birth control mindset that separates sex from procreation leads to more abortion, not less. There are consequences for trying to contravene Natural Law.
Susan: So, you are opposed to both abortion and all birth control or just the pill? Thanks.
I am opposed to birth control on a philosophical level. Sex has both a procreative and unitive dimension and separating the two heads quickly towards using the other.
I am particularly opposed to hormonal birth control methods and devices because, in addition to the moral, spiritual, and psychological harm done to both parties, there are added medical risks for the woman that are unacceptable and tolerated without much thought by our society.