The Washington Post article has this paragraph:

While most of these recommendations are well known to women who are pregnant or seeking to get pregnant, experts say it's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed.

R. Traister writes:

What's this all about? According to the Post, "experts say it's important that women follow this advice throughout their reproductive lives, because about half of pregnancies are unplanned and so much damage can be done to a fetus between conception and the time the pregnancy is confirmed." So even when we're not pregnant, or have no intention of becoming pregnant, or have already been pregnant and are done having babies, we should make our theoretically possible but wholly imaginary fetuses our priorities.

These new guidelines are meant to address the fact that the rate of infant mortality in the U.S. is three times higher than that in Japan and 2.5 times higher than that in Norway, Finland and Iceland. In fact, it's higher than that of most other industrialized nations, . . .

. . . because we have a sick and failing healthcare system that leaves millions of disadvantaged Americans without anything resembling the care they require. Almost 17 million women lack health insurance.

Pretending that we're going to solve this problem by instituting guidelines that treat women as baby incubators is not the solution.

Okay, we may not *solve* the problem, but following these recommendations will certainly go a long way toward ameliorating it. Why should that ruffle your feathers?

What's going on here? Ms. Traister is enraged that women are being asked to stay healthy in part because half of all pregnancies in the U.S. are unplanned.

She points out some very serious major failings in the U.S. healthcare system. Anyone with half a brain will agree that these wrongs must be righted.

BUT THAT'S A SEPARATE ISSUE FROM THE WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE.

But the atuhor is enraged that women are asked to stay healthy just in case they might become pregnant -- for the sake of the baby? (Secret information: These suggestions will also keep the woman healthy for her own sake, too.)

Let me restate that I fully support a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. But I fully do not support a woman's right to carry a pregnancy to term while engaging in behavior (excessive smoking? drinking? drug use? undernourishing herself? whatever) that is *likely* to damage the human being she will be giving birth to.

(I'm no medical professional, so I don't claim to know exactly what behaviors truly fall into this category.

For while it's her body as long as the fetus is inside it, it's another human being at some point, and no one has the right to expose another human to serious physical jeopardy -- or another future human being.

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I find Ms. Traister's suggestion about what *else* the U.S. should be doing to fix our broken healthcare system to be 100% sound. Her rage at suggestions for how women can stay healthy just in case they should become pregnant (and by the way, for their own sakes!) to be unbelievably selfish and short-sighted.

Drug companies love to sell whatever they can convince people to buy and doctors to prescribe.

Being of the male persuasion, I've never had a period myself, but have known plenty of women who experienced moderate to major discomfort during that time of the month.

So it sounds like a great idea if there's a way to avoid periods altogether.

I just hope that women choose this option cautiously, until any as-yet-unkown or -unacknowledged health risks come to light. (Which might be hard to determine if everyone's waiting for someone else to be the pioneer.)

One idea *may* be for only women who are nearing menopause try this drug-induced loss of periods at first, so we can verify that a few years of such a program are safe.

And then gradually, perhaps, younger and younger women might begin using this method. (So that, say, women who will be using this technique for about six years already know that those who've used it for about five years have not manifest any serious side effects, etc., etc.)

I would really hate for us to find out in 10 years that women using this method for over eight years have their faces turning plaid and their earlobes dropping off, or start dying of recalcitrant plebney, or something.