Just received a critique. How can we at PWPL take away medical treatment from women? Here’s the quote:
You people are just about as frightening as the men who seek to make this medical treatment unavailable to women. If not more so seeing as you are women. The women who find themselves in this situation should be free to choose and make their own informed decision and have access to whatever treatment or option they choose.
If it’s medical treatment–then it’s not a choice. And if it’s a choice, it’s not medical treatment. I don’t choose to have a colonoscopy. Or my appendix out. I listen to my doctor. I don’t waltz into her office and demand treatments. (Forget the fact that pregnancy is not an illness.)
So which is it, ardent pro-choicers? Hone in on your argument there, because this one’s pretty superficial.
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Rebecca says: I mostly agree, with a slight quibble. As a health consumer advocate (shameless plug) I would argue that in fact all medical care involves choices. Some of them are no-brainers – if you have an appendix about to rupture, choosing not to have surgery is tantamount to suicide – but lots of other legitimate medical choices exist, when deciding whether or not to use HRT in menopause, for instance, when choosing between treatments for cancer, each of which has its own risks and benefits, or even when choosing orthodontic treatment (pull some teeth to make more room, or have braces on for longer, and more painfully). The thing is, these are choices about treatment to address a medical problem.
One of the things feminists got right was insisting that pregnancy and childbirth are not medical problems. Putting on my Ivan Ilich hat, I agree that the construction of obstetrical care as a tool for managing the disease of pregnancy resulted in an incredible power imbalance in which (often male) obstetricians imposed a huge degree of control upon women. That model is no longer upon us. But if a healthy pregnancy is a natural part of life, not a disease (with which I fully concur) then abortion on demand is absolutely not a medical matter but a cosmetic one.
by 
It is particularly insulting that this “choice” is paid for by all of us.
Abortion is not a medical necessity and many of us resent our money being used to pay for the procedure (In the rare occurrence that it is a *true* medical necessity to save the mother’s life, the health care system always did condone and pay for it and I don’t think anyone takes issue with that).
Rebecca is correct. We do have a lot of leeway in choices that we make regarding medical treatment. But those choices that deal with *necessary* medical treatments are rightfully covered by health care. The medical treatments that we merely *choose* (often for convenience’ sake) should not be everybody’s financial burden.
The abortion-seekers “choice” is, at the very most, a treatment, not a necessity. You can not use “necessity” and “choice” in the same argument and still expect to be taken seriously.
In my mind, medical treatment is for something that is going “wrong” in our bodies and is harming us. Healthy pregnancies are not something that is going “wrong” in a woman’s body (a woman’s body is built so that pregnancy is a beneficial thing), so abortion is not medical treatment. An example for something that would be is my friend had a natural miscariage, but due to the fact that not everything got passed she got an infection and had to have a D&C.
It is particularly insulting that this “choice” is paid for by all of us.
Have no enough money to buy a building? Worry not, just because this is achievable to receive the loans to work out such kind of problems. Hence take a car loan to buy everything you require.