Non-News Redux
Something I was having trouble articulating in this post:
These things that we get our no-duh moments from, we’ve moved the onus of proof onto the default position as opposed to the intervention. Women would stand, move about in labour and eat as they please if we let them. The medical industry comes in and fucks with things, thus making these perhaps default positions untenable, (i.e. strapping women down during childbirth because doctors used twilight sleep and midwives didn’t which is why you wanted a doctor, or not letting women eat because early anesthetics had a much greater chance of causing vomiting and aspiration of fluid into the lungs). So now we spend a lot of time and money looking at “best evidence practices” because there are vestiges of techniques long gone that have become habitual and procedural.
Women would naturally seek to control and/or limit reproduction. Hence the supposed harvesting of silphium to extinction within the 1st century CE. We then assume that women shouldn’t or won’t wish to limit this reproduction and ban it. So now we spend an enormous amount of time and energy and money fighting to make sure that women don’t lose the ability to have agency over reproduction, and have studies that show legal banning or societal condemnation of this want doesn’t effect women seeking out the ability to control and limit reproduction. So we spend lots of time and money and energy to figure out that, a ha!, if we give women the choice to control conception abortion rates decrease!
So, because of historical, societal or religious accidents, we confuse where the burden of proof should lie. Admittedly, this comes from a pretty radical feminist point of view and is probably not the viewpoint that the obstetrician or the clergy hold. But, then again, I’m of the opinion that women are people too, and can probably decide what’s best for them and their families.
Edit: I also feel compelled to make it clear that I’m not advocating a stance that everything’s default position is the way it’s supposed to be. That would mean might makes rights, at least 10% of women die in childbirth outright and the morbidity rates are ridiculous, and I’d not really exist. What I am saying is that in the case of birth, technology isn’t always the answer and can impede things.
I’m now going to bed and stop rambling. Discuss.
Tags: abortion, agency, religion, reproduction, research
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