A striking paradigm shift in medical ethics
Jennifer Lahl and Kallie Fell, president and executive director respectively of the Center for Bioethics and Culture, write at Reality’s Last Stand:
In recent years, a striking paradigm shift in medical ethics has emerged, driven by progressive political ideologies purporting to champion “Social Justice.” This shift has precipitated a surge in initiatives centered around diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The resulting effects have varied considerably; they include the introduction of explicit racial bias in treatment protocols in a quest for “health equity,” and an unsettling disregard for biological sex as an important variable in both medical research and patient care. Instead, the new radical movement favors categorizing individuals based on their self-identified and medically irrelevant “gender identity.”
A bit like issuing all women with jock straps and all men with bras, only much much much more likely to be fatal.
This trend of overlooking biological sex as a critical medical variable stems from an ideological drive to “queer” the natural world. The proponents of this view resist categorization, arguing that such practices are instruments of oppression wielded by the powerful against the less powerful. According to this perspective, medicine must eschew not only biological categorization of patients, but also traditional notions of what is deemed desirable or adverse patient outcomes.
So we’re queering death now? Queering chronic pain, fatigue, weakness, fever? Health is bad and illness is good?
A provocative new paper in the journal Qualitative Research in Health titled “Medical uncertainty and reproduction of the ‘normal’: Decision-making around testosterone therapy in transgender pregnancy” by Pfeffer and colleagues propels us further down the road of medical malpractice.
The authors, a group of transgender sociologists and enthusiasts, and healthcare activists, with not one medical degree among them, argue to dramatically move the goal posts of medical ethics, choosing to completely disregard the health, safety, and well-being of the developing fetus, all in the name of “trans” inclusion.
Ok brace yourselves.
The authors argue that “gendered” pregnancy care is too focused on helping women have healthy babies, and that it might be okay for transmen to continue taking testosterone during pregnancy despite the known health risks to the fetus and effects on its normal development. The desire for “normal fetal outcomes,” according to the authors, is rooted in a problematic desire “to protect their offspring from becoming anything other than ‘normal’” and “reflect historical and ongoing social practices for creating ‘ideal’ and normative bodies.”
Ok so why was this published? What reckless cynical sniggering fool decided it would be a good idea to put this disgusting death-cultish garbage out there?
Updating to add: Here is the paper. (There’s a link in the article, but have another for convenience.)
One of the authors is Sally Hines. Of course she is.
The desire for normal fetal outcomes is so 20th century. Bring back thalidomide!
In other words, we can make decisions about the life of another person who has no say in that decision (not being born yet) and is the one who must live with the consequences. Got it.
Looking at the paper in question and…BAM! Section 1.2 is titled at the start “(Re)Producing ‘normal’?” Yes, we have returned to the 1990s, when Alison Bechdel, in DTWOF, mocked the pretentious parentheses and the querulous quotation marks. I feel no need to read further.
@Bruce
No no, we can’t do that, although it works like a hot damn to counter nausea and AFAIK (I may be misremembering) is perfectly safe for non-fetal individuals. But boring ol’ regular women might possibly get or be pregnant, and can’t be trusted to know or to follow instructions*, so no-one can have access to it because a possibly/probably nonexistent fetus might possibly be exposed to it.
What a load of… irony we’ve found ourselves in o.O
*Admittedly this is generally true of humans, but also generally considered true only of normal women, because of course.
The desire for normal fetal outcomes is so 20th century. Bring back thalidomide!
We have
The desire for normal fetal outcomes is so 20th century. Bring back thalidomide!
Oops
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
Note that Thalidomide is contra-indicated when pregnant even though it may otherwise be a drug of choice for treating other ailments.
Emphasis in italics mine.
The thought that medical professionals, or anyone for that matter, would take a gamble on the welfare and future of a person not yet born, to suit the whim and psychological desire of another is deeply unethical to me. The stance taken on Thalidomide is correct. Blur this line and next you’ll have the Munchausen by proxy cases resulting in kids limbs being lopped off, or kids poisoned by Doctors because it makes the parent feel so much better! Hyperbole maybe, but it’s on the spectrum.
Underpinning this paper is the concept that ‘normal’ is over-rated, even bad. Certainly boring and unnecesary. I get that to some degree. We don’t need to breed an Aryan master race. But you know, the number of people whose life (and the lives of those around them) is actually improved by being neurodivergent, mentally and/or physically disabled, diseased, or damaged by accidents must be vanishingly tiny. I’d happily do without my afflictions for certain, and as a friend and employer I have yet to meet a differently abled person who doesn’t cause the business and colleagues additional work and stress as a result. We still value them and welcome them as colleagues, but they perform in spite of their affliction. They don’t bring any extra special magic to business and relationships because of them.
How prescient was Katherine Dunn? Geek Love was published in 1989.
There’s a character who wants to be a nullo, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_Love
(I recommend the novel, btw.)
I still can’t connect gender dysphoria in women to the desire to be pregnant.
@Mike,
That’s because you’re still holding on to the transphobic belief that only boring old women can get pregnant.
Biological imperatives often still win out *despite* the stupid… Dunno how to feel about that given I don’t think abortion is murder or anything significant. Still, choosing to risk mutant babies just to indulge in extreme body modifications and placate one’s instincts seems to fly in the face of utilitarian philosophy.
Another, I see, is Ruth Pearce, who tweets as NotRightRuth.
Tell us more; I’m blocked.
Male presenting as female. Pro-trans activist. Self-describes as a feminist. Currently Lecturer in Community Development (School of Education) at the University of Glasgow. ‘Her [sic] research explores themes of inequality, marginalisation, power, and transformative political struggle from a trans feminist perspective.’
I remember rolling my eyes at some of Pearce’s posts on Twitter, but I am now shut out as I don’t have an account there and I am finding nitter hard to use.
Sally Hines is listed as a collaborator on several of Pearce’s publications.
Thank you.
GOD I hate it when men pretending to be women lecture us on inequality, marginalisation, and power. HE’S OF THE RULING CLASS.
Quite.