I started a rant last week in The Lifeline:
Not only do women not know about their own fertility — something I will safely generalize — the whole of women’s health care is one big scandal of not actually finding what’s wrong with women’s health, but masking unwanted symptoms, often with carcinogens that also can work to prevent pregnancy.
But I was already running long, so I about left it there before returning to AOC’s egg files.
Today I see this in the New Republic, reminding me that there is never a day in the United States when it’s not an appropriate day for such a rant about the scandal that you would think feminists would be up in arms about if they weren’t too busy applauding priorities like legal infanticide in Massachusetts:
Arkansas, meanwhile, last year became the first state to enact the RESTORE Act, which requires insurance companies to cover what is called Restorative Reproductive Medicine, or RRM. The controversial approach—which critics deride as “blame and shame”—aims to identify and treat physical issues and lifestyle choices that allegedly interfere with fertility. The problem, IVF proponents say, is that precious time can be wasted finding the “root cause” of infertility—and then it may be too late for IVF. [Emphasis added.]
Yes, why would medicine ever waste time letting doctors look to see what is actually wrong with their patients and work to remedy — instead of mask — the specific problem?
Don’t we all want a placating catch-all instead that will keep the lines moving?
Besides, if your teenage girl has an irregular monthly cycle and acne, we all know she’s going to be having sex, so why not put her on the contraceptive pill? It might kill three birds with one stone!
And, hey, later on, she’ll come shopping for IVF because the pill messed with her fertility in the first place.
Oh, and by the way, she’s 40 now.
Definitely don’t want to waste time finding out what is wrong — IVF might not work and cause added pain, but let’s keep the industry in business! And besides, if she didn’t go the IVF route, she might wind up doing something crazy like fostering a 12-year-old in the foster-care system near her.
Okay, that maybe was a rant.
But perhaps you are a woman. And perhaps you are the mother of a teenage girl (making you also, a woman). You may know this outrage all too personally well.
Mercifully, TNR did quote Emma Waters from Heritage:
Emma Waters, senior policy analyst in the Center for Technology and the Human Person at The Heritage Foundation, rejects the notion that RRM is not as effective. “To treat infertility, one must treat the underlying causes. IVF, in and of itself, doesn’t do that,” said Waters, the co-author of the Heritage paper that has become a template for state legislation pushing RRM.
Emma’s point isn’t a political or ideological one. It would be mainstream medicine if doctors weren’t pressured into protocols that are not necessarily led by science.
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