The Political Hat

     Anti-natalism is ultimately anti-human. One shouldn’t belittle or deman women form whom having children wasn’t in the cards, those who outright declare that pregnancy is a disease are indeed obsessively nuts. Such is the case of the authors of this little scholastic journal article declaring that pregnancy should be seen as a disease, normatively speaking.

“In this paper, we identify some key features of what makes something a disease, and consider whether these apply to pregnancy. We argue that there are some compelling grounds for regarding pregnancy as a disease. Like a disease, pregnancy affects the health of the pregnant person, causing a range of symptoms from discomfort to death. Like a disease, pregnancy can be treated medically. Like a disease, pregnancy is caused by a pathogen, an external organism invading the host’s body. Like a disease, the risk of getting pregnant can be reduced by using prophylactic measures. We address the question of whether the ‘normality’ of pregnancy, its current necessity for human survival, or the value often attached to it are reasons to reject the view that pregnancy is a disease. We point out that applying theories of disease to the case of pregnancy, can in many cases illuminate inconsistencies and problems within these theories. Finally, we show that it is difficult to find one theory of disease that captures all paradigm cases of diseases, while convincingly excluding pregnancy. We conclude that there are both normative and pragmatic reasons to consider pregnancy a disease.”

     Right off the bat, the justification for this “normative” idea that pregnancy is a disease is to treat the perpetuation of the species as something abnormal…

“Imagine a patient who visits the doctor having an abdominal mass that is increasing in size, causing pain, vomiting and displacement of other internal organs. Tests are booked, and investigations are planned. But when the patient mentions that she has missed her period, these alarming symptoms suddenly become trivial. She is pregnant! No disease, nothing to worry about. But is this the right way to think about things?”

     Yet even while calling pregnancy a “disease”, they note it has “subjective benefits”, such as reduction in lifetime risk of breast cancer, but that won’t let anyone get in their way to declare that pregnancy can be much worse and thus ought to be considered a disease on par with the measles. What’s worse, pregnancy is a sexist disease!

“However, unlike measles, pregnancy is a condition that affects only a certain group of people: those with female reproductive organs. Perhaps this partly explains why the risks involved in pregnancy are higher in places where women’s rights and independence receive less social and legal protection.”

     They then go on to claim that disease itself is subjective and it’s only a disease if you don’t like it?

“A person who is happy to be pregnant may welcome even unpleasant symptoms such as stretch marks and nausea. The pain of childbirth may be treated as a badge of honour. Perhaps then, the ‘badness’ component of pregnancy can simply be disregarded in such cases. If so, a wanted pregnancy is not a disease, whatever its impact on a person’s health. However, for consistency, this might imply that in other cases where a person finds value in their experience, they can no longer claim to have a disease.”

     If you want these horrible outcomes, then it’s not a disease to you! This is the logic of “bug chasers” and “gift givers” intentionally transmitting AIDS. Pregnancy, in this paper, has become nothing more than a masochistic fetish.

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