Congratulations!
You're pre-pregnant! At least, you are if you're female and menstruating.
New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.
This means that the federal government is urging all women to stop drinking, smoking, and working in hazardous conditions because they might get pregnant and those activities are hazardous to fetuses. Women are also to be encouraged to control their weights and chronic illnesses, not for their own sake, but for the sake of any potential fetuses they might be harboring.
The theory is that, since half of all pregnancies are unplanned, the rise in infant mortality, the first in decades, we saw in 2002 was due to women's not taking adequate care of themselves. So now women are being blamed for the rise in infant mortality, and higher rates compared to other civilized countries. Of course, blame the women. We couldn't possibly examine concrete differences in our public policies towards health care and women's reproductive education as compared to other First World nations. No, then we might be forced to admit that those nations have public health care that allow women regular preventative health care and screenings. We might have to acknowledge that we've taken scientific and factual information about women's reproductive health away and replaced it with special-interest-driven pseudo-science and morality judgments.
So it doesn't matter if you're celibate, gay, child-free by choice, or actively trying to conceive, if you're in the US, and you're female, you may be considered 'pre pregnant' by your doctor and may be treated accordingly. Remember, ladies, don't get healthy for yourself, do it for the babies. Have you had your folic acid today?
New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon.
This means that the federal government is urging all women to stop drinking, smoking, and working in hazardous conditions because they might get pregnant and those activities are hazardous to fetuses. Women are also to be encouraged to control their weights and chronic illnesses, not for their own sake, but for the sake of any potential fetuses they might be harboring.
The theory is that, since half of all pregnancies are unplanned, the rise in infant mortality, the first in decades, we saw in 2002 was due to women's not taking adequate care of themselves. So now women are being blamed for the rise in infant mortality, and higher rates compared to other civilized countries. Of course, blame the women. We couldn't possibly examine concrete differences in our public policies towards health care and women's reproductive education as compared to other First World nations. No, then we might be forced to admit that those nations have public health care that allow women regular preventative health care and screenings. We might have to acknowledge that we've taken scientific and factual information about women's reproductive health away and replaced it with special-interest-driven pseudo-science and morality judgments.
So it doesn't matter if you're celibate, gay, child-free by choice, or actively trying to conceive, if you're in the US, and you're female, you may be considered 'pre pregnant' by your doctor and may be treated accordingly. Remember, ladies, don't get healthy for yourself, do it for the babies. Have you had your folic acid today?