Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 10/13/2025 2:23:42 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Women won't choose motherhood in a climate that undermines women's health
My late grandmother and I share two things: A very mean glare when irate and a history of domestic abuse. An unwitting feminist before feminism was en vogue, she ensured a key difference in our fates. Thanks to my grandmother's adamant emphasis on educating girls in our family, I could do what she couldn't: leave.
All women should have the chance I had -- the choice my grandmother didn't have but gifted to me. The advancement of women's rights has blessed us with freedom. We can be mothers, and we can be more.
We've flourished. Look at medicine -- we're outpacing men in medical school enrollment and are more likely to practice evidence-based medicine and achieve superior patient outcomes. I cite these data not to belittle anyone, but to demonstrate that, given the opportunity, women contribute enormously to societal good. "Welcoming women into medicine is one of the greatest advancements of our field," a medical school attending told me.
But women's choices have become a scapegoat for societal ills. Some describe feminism as a "murderous and evil ideology," claiming it is "self-centered, anti-man, and anti-family." This rhetoric, promulgated by some of our political leaders today, underlies forced birth policies.
Most recently, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that the FDA is reviewing the safety of the drug mifepristone (Mifeprex), widely acknowledged as safe and effective. The potential for this drug to be restricted by amplifying false claims about its safety appears to be yet another pronatalist tactic amidst an alarming rollback of women's choices and attacks on public health.
Pronatalism: A Mistaken Solution
As a young physician with a background in public health, I believe in sustainable, long-term solutions for any public health problem. This involves understanding cultural values, social systems, and early prevention. We should apply the same lens to the falling birthrate.
There is no cohesion in public health policy for women today. Ironically, the political contingent that emphasizes very real biological differences between the sexes has deemed medical research on population-specific health needs -- including women's issues -- divisive. Federal research grant applications cannot include specific terms, but there is debate about which terms are absolutely prohibited. I personally was instructed not to use "woman," "female," or "trauma," but the White House disputes that "woman" is a banned term. I, like many clinicians, remain confused and cannot pursue my professional interest in trauma- and stressor-related disorders in women if these words are indeed verboten in federally funded research.
Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) is rife with contradictions about women's health. It emphasizes the reproductive harms of environmental toxins, while the EPA deregulates drinking water standards. Trump styled himself the "fertilization president," promising to guarantee insurance coverage of IVF; we have yet to see any federal mandate on the subject. The administration promotes creating families, but its "Big Beautiful Bill" dramatically cut Medicaid, which finances 41% of all U.S. births. MAHA ostensibly sabotages its own goals.
Our birthrate hit an all-time low in 2024, posing significant problems: fewer people to care for the aging population, less innovation, and the threat of economic instability.
But instead of helping women by resolving the policy contradictions, legislators appear to have turned to an easier target -- women themselves.
Enter pronatalism and forced birth in the post-Roe era: distorting science to justify investigating mifepristone's safety, talk of banning birth control, total abortion bans, and uninformed suggestions like the naive $5,000 "baby bonus."
What have we achieved instead with the overturning of Roe? Small increases in fertility rates in states with abortion bans with concomitant increases in infant mortality; a rise in pregnancy complications, followed by appalling debates over how critically ill a woman must be before doctors may intervene; and a dystopian climate sowing discord between states and profound chaos and moral distress in the medical profession.
These outcomes of forced birth are not compatible with public health.
A Note on Violence Against Women
Another adverse health outcome particularly concerns me: the rise in domestic violence in states with abortion restrictions. Such policies engender abuse of women by conceptualizing them first as vehicles for procreation before they are autonomous humans with free will.
Violence against women does not arise in a vacuum; misogynistic attitudes and policies beget violence. There is a documented rise in overt misogyny, accompanying political rhetoric demanding women's submission and self-sacrifice. Recall Doug Wilson's (the Christian nationalist pastor platformed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth) dehumanizing stance that "women are the kind of people that people come out of."
I don't believe most men -- and yes, it's mostly men -- behave like this. But it's also difficult to ignore the ubiquity of "cake-smashing" videos (where grooms violently shove their brides' faces into the wedding cake), the gender disparity in partner abandonment after cancer diagnosis, or the fact that intimate partner homicide is now the leading cause of maternal mortality in the U.S.
As a young woman, it seems that men just don't like us. Why would we deliberately choose this fate for ourselves when we have other options?
We cannot expect women to welcome motherhood in a country that believes in their inferiority, refuses to support them meaningfully, and treats their bodies as expendable machines for production. Women won't choose motherhood in a climate that undermines women's health.
Looking Forward: Real Solutions
We must look for constructive public health solutions that center women and uplift good men. This climate isn't good for families, health, or social harmony, but the answer doesn't lie in forced birth. In fact, this hurts men too, breeding generalized distrust, which may unfairly affect those who truly want equality in partnership and genuine emotional connection.
We can work collaboratively for a better world if only we could hear each other with humility.
We can include consent and healthy communication in relationships as a fundamental part of sexual education in schools.
We can hold people in power to high ethical standards with true accountability, and we can choose to stop elevating known abusers of women to high office.
We can spotlight healthy models of masculinity in the media, highlighting humility, selflessness, and emotional intelligence as markers of success, over blind ambition, sexual prowess, and material wealth.
We can expose children to healthy male characters in art, film, and literature. Lord of the Rings offers fantastic examples of healthy masculinity, showing strength and vulnerability in the same characters. I'm aware that many men may feel emasculated if they become emotional, worrying they might appear weak. I'd remind them that no one ever questioned Aragorn's masculinity.
But if we continue to treat women like trash, expecting them to tolerate it silently, we have only ourselves to blame for the fracturing of families and declining birthrate. There is nothing "natural" about forcing women into domestic servitude. If it were, our government wouldn't need coercive legislation for women to adopt the submissive role.
Chloe Nazra Lee, MD, MPH, is a resident physician in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. The views above reflect only the author's and are not shared or endorsed by any institution with which she is affiliated.
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
She missed Prov 31.
< sigh ... >
For these evil creatures, killing babies is the highest priority.
Clueless. So much classwork, so little brainpower.
Yes. Such wonderful words đđ»
What a twisted point of view and how arrogant to think she has all the answers as a resident in psychiatry. This article seems to written to validate her own sense of importance. The jumbled premises and unsupported conclusions seem unlikely=t to have any other value.
If science is not allowed to reevaluate prior conclusions, it is not science. It is faith.
She sounds nice.
Be sure to ask the baby how safe it is ...
>> She missed Prov 31.
By a country mile!
âunderlies forced birth policies.â
No one is forcing you to give birth. Keep your damned legs locked together and you wonât get pregnant.
And you can stuff the ârape and incestâ talk while youâre at it.
L
I thought about rebutting some of her hogwash, but there is so much it, why bother. This woman has a very distorted view of life and the relationship(s) of the sexes.
The next leftist woman that uses the word misogyny incorrectly needs to be bitch slapped. A lot of expensive years in school and she doesn’t know the real meaning of the word.
Over educated ignorance.
Her essay is horridly anti-human.
I’m sure she isn’t sorry about that.
Here is yet another secessionist from the human race.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.