Go troll somewhere else.

The world should be frightened if you are already a parent or should ever become one.

Have a nice day.

I have an example here for those of you who are trying to put a positive spin on the CDC's new guidelines for treating all women of childbearing age as "pre-pregnant."

Did you know that part of those guidelines include not prescribing any medications to us that *might* be teratogenic (e.g., known to cause birth defects)?

I went to the doc last week for a UTI, and instead of giving me Cipro, which is the standard, they gave me another antibiotic that they knew wouldn't cause birth defects.

Now I'm allergic to Sulfa drugs, so for me, Cipro is the standard treatment for UTIs and has been for the past 15 years or so. In this case, they gave me something else and made it clear that the reason for doing so was the tiny chance that I might be pregnant.

Even with my assurances that (a) my period should be starting "any day now" (it arrived the next day), (b) that hubby and I had been using birth control, AND (c) my self-proclaimed childfree status, which isn't about to change -- they still settled on a less effective drug, because, after all, I might be pregnant.

Technically, I have been of childbearing age since I was 11, so that's 27 years. And it was only last week that suddenly I was given a less effective medicine because of the tiny risk of pregnancy. What's changed? The CDC's new "guidelines" have been published.

"You should try putting vitamins in your mouth instead of words in the CDC's"

You do realize, don't you, that you just made my point? The one about objections being treated as if they were excuses for self-abuse?

Did you actually bother to read the report, especially with some previous background in obstetric health? I did. There's nothing new in it, and there's nothing in it that's going to both help the situation and actually get funding. It's worse than useless because the mere fact that it and it's "recommendations" were made makes the Bush administration look like it's doing something when it's not. They aren't going to give poor women better access to health care and family planning. Just watch; they will cherry-pick the cheapest and most PR-friendly step and do that, if they do anything at all. They might not. This report could easily get buried on the grounds that admitting to our infant mortality problem would be bad for morale.

These tricks are exactly how Bush and Co. maintain their power, by disguising their agenda as "common sense" or as "protecting the children." Any objections are seen as irresponsible or even dangerous because after all, there are children's lives at stake. How dare anyone question anything that might possibly benefit a child? They've done this with education "reform" and with abstinence-only sex-ed. They even got America to sign off on a pointless war using a variation of this strategy, and now they're doing it with reproductive health.

Congratulations. You've just been sucked in.

>Thanks for letting us know you don't believe in taking vitamins but you do advocate smoking, drinking, and illegal drug use.<

Thanks for trying to put words in my mouth. I said nothing of the kind.

>I find it sad we are reduced to mocking good advice simply because we're afraid of the consequences if a man, or a Bush appointee says it.<

I don't know why it is so hard for you to believe (if you are really all that interested in women's rights, which I suspect you are not) that advice can be given as part of an agenda--and used to categorize people in a certain way. Again, _why_ is the CDC just giving this advice to women and not advising "pre-father" men on how to keep their sperm healthy? Shouldn't advice of this kind be given to everyone?

>If we're as smart and clever and mature as we think we are, we'd all already be taking much better care of ourselves.<

"All" being who, exactly? Do you think most women are not intelligent enough to look this stuff up if they plan to become pregnant. Or do you think they have to have it forced on them, because of _course_ every woman wants to have a baby and doesn't know enough to find basic health information?

>Misunderstaning 'freedom' as a licence to just do anything without consequence is just immaturity masquerading as grown up.<

Oh, can the judgemental bullshit. You act as if women can't make choices for themselves and have to be given health information totally from a "pregnancy" POV. Women have the right and intelligence to make choices about how they want to live. For the CDC to hand out health advice presuming that every woman is going to be in a particular circumstance is patronizing and insulting. But, hey, if you have problems with women making choices, feel free to live without any. Just quit whining that the rest of us are so foolish that we want to live as adults, not children being told/tricked into what to do.

But by golly, the CDC has the solution: "Shut up and take your g**d*** vitamins, you stupid cow!" Any objections to this line of pseudo-reasoning are met with a chorus of the same. What, you don't want to protect your future baby? You must be some kind of obese, partying, drug-addled, low-life scum. --anon.

If only winning an argument were that easy.

Do any of you actually know what folic acid is and what it's in? It's a water-soluble B-vitamin, and it's easy to get as much as you need from diet alone. It's in whole grains, citrus fruits, dark leafy veggies, and beans, and that's just for a start. It is, as Medline puts it, "plentiful in the food supply" and several popular foods are fortified with it. Most multi-vitamins have it. Heck, tonight's dinner probably has the entire RDA in it. Any woman who is taking halfway decent care of herself is getting enough of it already. Women who aren't getting enough are usually the--you guessed it--poor, who cannot afford either folate-rich foods or good vitamins, never mind a doctor to nudge them about nutrition.

Infant mortality rates are tied to the social safety net, not the lifestyles of the middle-class and complacent, and Conservative politicians have been gleefully shredding the social safety net for years. Infant mortality, however, is one of the primary predictors of state failure. If this doesn't slow down soon, we're going to have a serious problem.

But by golly, the CDC has the solution: "Shut up and take your g**d*** vitamins, you stupid cow!" Any objections to this line of pseudo-reasoning are met with a chorus of the same. What, you don't want to protect your future baby? You must be some kind of obese, partying, drug-addled, low-life scum.

Nice try! The truth is, I have a heck of a lot more on my mind with this issue than my own more or less optimal situation, simply because I can see past the end of my own nose. Something needs to be done, and folic acid is not the answer. It only looks like the answer because so many American women are eating foods so nutritionally deficient that they're not getting enough of a common nutrient.