There was a very powerful piece in the Guardian I thought would make an interesting discussion piece here. It covers almost too many things to summarize here, but a few things especially caught my attention:

* The way medical terms around women's fertility/pregnancy heavily suggest personal or moral failings. 

* The way that women's needs and concerns are belittled or shamed.

The author talks about asking her specialist for more information about restrictions she should be following. He pushes back, hard, implying that she's just career-obsessed and is pressuring him. When she asks again, he tells her "fine, you're on bedrest for four months" in a way that makes her feel as if he's definitely attempting to punish her for questioning him. 

She continues, "I reminded myself that if I felt inferior to this man, it was only because he wished it to be so, not because it was true. I asked again for him to explain his reasoning.

He took another tack. “I’ve had people disregard me and they lose a baby they’ve wanted for 10 years,” he said. “Because of an obsession with work.”

A woman who wanted or needed to work, then, and in so doing defied his orders, could be said to have caused her baby’s death. It seemed to me that he chose to place blame on that woman – to imply that she had caused her own loss, even when that loss may have been unavoidable. Though this man had made a successful business in women’s health, I understood then that he didn’t know a thing about the interior lives of women.

I left the clinic. I would have liked never to return. But here is the pregnant woman’s conundrum: we are not unto ourselves. We hold within us the beginnings of other people; we’re supposed to preserve our own independent humanity while growing new, dependent humanity. It’s a hard balance to strike, and we’re led to believe any decision, mistake, slip of the mind, can have atrocious consequences. We’re expected to subvert everything in our lives if necessary. Also, if not necessary."

One of my favorite paragraphs was this one:

"The “incompetent cervix” joins a number of curious obstetric diagnoses: the “inhospitable uterus”, “hostile uterus”, “hostile cervical mucus”, “blighted ovum”. Meanwhile, men experience “premature ejaculation” and not “inadequate testicles”; “erectile dysfunction”, but never a “futile penis”. They exhibit problems, but their anatomy is not defined as lacking. Pregnant women over 35 are of “advanced maternal age”, just a slight improvement over the previous term, only recently defunct: “elderly”. Those who have suffered more than two miscarriages are known as “habitual aborters”. We experience “spontaneous abortions”. A bad habit, that impetuous self-aborting: if only we had the self‑control to stop."

What do you think? Does she have a point? Have you had any experiences like this?