Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Those irresponsible women
Wow. Just...wow
The link is to a WaPo article on new federal guidelines for women's health. It breaks down to each woman treating each day like she could be pregnant at any moment.
I'm really at a loss for words...this seems to be such a huge slap in the face for American women.
OOh ooh! I know. We should slap little surgeon generals warning stickers on all of our good old american girls! It might read something like this:
WARNING: All women are stupid. Use at your own risk.
That should be clear enough...
It would be silly and alarmist of me to think that this guideline is a precurser to the government attempting to ban all forms of birth control, but it's not silly of me to think that these guidelines are pointing at all women and saying, "You're not responsible enough with your bodies or your partners to control when you're going to have a baby...dumbass."
I'm too flustered to write any more on this.
Enjoy.
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Look Out
In a perfect world, this may be good advice for women. But in our world, it doesn't take much imagination to see where it could lead. I can assume that once the "data" meets the miniscule standards of tyrants and theocrats it could someday be illegal to serve liquor to women, or cigars, or birth control pills, or fast cars...
This Man is starting to feel like an island...
Among other things, this means all women between first menstrual period and menopause should take folic acid supplements, refrain from smoking, maintain a healthy weight and keep chronic conditions such as asthma and diabetes under control.
Crazy talk!
Women should also make sure all vaccinations are up-to-date and avoid contact with lead-based paints and cat feces, Biermann said.
Insanity!
Other groups involved include the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the March of Dimes, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention's Division of Reproductive Health and the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
Those biology Nazis!
Really, this is worth getting excited about? What next, the food pyramid as a weapon to oppress fat people?
Some pregnant women don't take proper care of themselves; some do. I've no problem with the government issuing sound scientific guidelines on the matter (as opposed to the abstinence-only nonsense and "abortion causes breast cancer" stuff).
Did you know that neural tube defects can be reduced up to 75% by taking folic acid prior and during pregnancy?
Did you know that handling cat feces during pregnancy puts the fetus at risk of damage from toxoplasmosis?
Maybe you do; maybe you don't. Purely anecdotal, but my experience has been that a lot of women don't know this. I see no harm in telling women the facts.
I swear, given the right-wing religious nuttery of the right and the Bush Derangement Syndrome of the left, I truly am a man without a country (or, well, a political party).
Clearly
Clearly the actual health advice given isn't bad. There are good reasons for women to follow the health advice. It's not the health advice itself that's at issue here, rather it's the framing of the advice.
What Lindsay says...
...is that the CDC had to frame it that way in order for the report to get publicized. The advice given is sound for both men and women, but in order to get more people behind the report, it had to be framed in a language portraying women as incubators.
The actual article doesn't
The actual article doesn't seem, at first glance anyway, to be as inflammatory as all that. Take a look at the "question for nurses to ask patients" at the bottom of the article, for instance: "Do you smoke, and do you plan to become pregnant in the next year? If not, what birth control are you using?" Since unintended pregnancy is (as far as I'm concerned) a major health issue, anything that pushes the average woman to consider how she's going to prevent it is a good thing in my book.
However of the other health advice, three quarters of it (don't smoke, keep weight under control, keep chronic conditions under control) apply to everyone of every age--I don't see why they need some "pre-pregnancy" status to push those.
I also don't like that reference to "workplace hazards" harming a fetus before a woman realizes she's pregnant. That sounds like an opening for people to restrict all women to low-paying jobs because they are "safer" for an unwanted fetus.
You Nailed It, Bruce
Great topic RickU. That's some fundamentally disturbing regulatory authority for any agency of the government. It's sorta anti-thetical to what China's done for the last several decades.
Of course, if Bush (and Alito) has his way, all it would take is an Executive Order to make it so. The Congress just slows things down.
We should just disband it for our own good.
{shakin'head}
a personally evolving organism
Whites Only Need Apply
each woman treating each day like she could be pregnant at any moment.
This makes perfect sense with what we have been seeing on Fox News lately. Women need to do their patriotic duty and start making babies in order to propagate the white power structure in this country.
Is it just me or is all this immigration talk recently starting to bring the Neo-Nazis out of the closet?