This article is also noted on feministing, which I usually find to be a very astute and open minded blog. However, I think that they fail to really analyze this article. They point out that the article states that underweight women have a higher chance of miscarriage. Ok, so that's great. Body image. Don't worry about weighing a flat 100 pounds.
But... the article goes on to say this:
Women who aren't married, women who are living with a partner, and women who have had terminated pregnancies are also at higher risk of miscarriage.
This was a survey of 6600 women ages 18-55. I don't know enough about science, but once again, this seems to me to reinforce the ideology that women must abide by certain social rules or risk losing a baby. The guilt factor. Along with this, I'd say this is pretty darn damning evidence.
Along with the idea that women are to blame for most things, you're also to blame if you lose a baby. This is such bullshit, I feel. Of course, I've never endured it, but I'd say that losing a baby is pretty much a difficult-enough experience without factoring in the government and science trying to tell you that the reason you lost your baby was one of any number of things YOU are responsible for. Wow.
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2 comments:
I think you're getting a little overexcited here. The study simply pulled together the common factors in the life and medical history of women who miscarry. These factors may be causative or just correllated. For example, there's no way that not having a wedding band on your finger is going to cause you to miscarry, but if being unmarried means that you're also more likely to be supporting kids on a single income and unable to get health insurance, then it's no surprise your risk of miscarriage would go up. Or the case of previous abortion: if you've aborted a pregnancy in the past, you possibly did so because the fetus had birth defects, and so you might be prone to pregnancies that are unable to make it to full term. And of course, there *are* things that women can do toincrease risk of miscarriage, and if they can be teased out and avoided, all the better.
you're right, of course, with a lot of that.
but then again, it doesn't pull together the common factors in the life and medical history of "women" but a certain group of women that this study chose.
and you list a lot of IFs: If you aborted because there were possible birth defects, if being unmarried...
but i think that, as several other bloggers have discussed over the past few days with the pregnancy of Cheney's daughter, more and more women are choosing pregnancy without men - not because they have been left or because they are pregnant through one-night stands but because they want a child and may not currently be in the position to have a child with a partner.
and, certainly, if we can decrease miscarriages, great - so why isn't the study focused on that? to me, it came across as trying to place blame in some sense.
but regardless of that, thanks for your comments.
i do tend to get overexcited. :)
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