Pregnant Women Deserve Better

Tylenol has often been used as a pain reliever for pregnant women. Photo courtesy of JeepersMedia via Flickr

It seems like women’s bodies are a constant topic of debate when it comes to politics. The government talks about women’s bodies as if they are an amorphous object, as if we women on the receiving end of their legislation don’t feel every single word they say. For some time now, the government’s latest obsession has been pregnant women, whose identities have been reduced to being an incubator before a human being.

At this very moment, Planned Parenthood runs the risk of having its federal funding slashed by the Trump administration, all to prevent women from receiving an abortion. What this administration refuses to acknowledge is that Planned Parenthood offers a plethora of aid to all women. Aid consisting of birth control options, prenatal care and gynecological care, in addition to providing cancer tests and screenings. 

Females have been notoriously disregarded by medical officials, often being misled and having their diagnosis put off due to significant gender biases. Many medical and disease tests include a one-size-fits-all approach to medicine, which typically highlights the male physique over the female. 

This causes women of all stages of life to be inadequately cared for medically; pregnant women are no different.

One in five women has reported being mistreated while receiving maternity care. Women have reported that they have been shouted at, scolded, had their physical privacy disrespected, had the withholding of treatment threatened and often received no response to a help request.

Being left untreated by proper medical care while experiencing aches, pains and fevers, pregnant women have always been encouraged to use one of the only drugs deemed safe while pregnant: acetaminophen, or Tylenol. 

Recently, Trump and the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, have stated that pregnant women taking acetaminophen are linked to autism. With this, Trump is urging pregnant women to “tough it out” and not use any painkillers throughout pregnancy.

Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has announced that acetaminophen products will include a new warning label that will list the alleged association between the medication and autism in children.

Acetaminophen has been widely considered safe by medical professionals for pregnant women to use. In fact, other pain-relief options have higher, well-established risks of harm for the mother and child during pregnancy, which is why acetaminophen has been a sort of saving grace for pregnant women for ages now.

And it’s not like the Trump administration is pushing for medical professionals to introduce any new drug trials that focus on and include pregnant people. It is purposeful ignorance to tell pregnant women to suck-it up and bear through the pain that pregnancy brings while simultaneously making zero effort to protect these women, and in turn their child.

Instead, America villainizes pregnant women. This country calls women murderers for carrying out the emotional act of safe abortion. This country lets medical professionals mistreat pregnant women who are looking for proper care. And most recently, this country is now blaming pregnant women for blatantly “giving” their children autism, a neurological disorder caused by genetics.

Above all, a pregnant woman is a person. She has a name, a personality and an identity. She is more than her womb and the child she is growing. The government ceases to see a pregnant woman as anything more than the fetus she is carrying, all without realizing that any restriction on her freedom only inhibits that child they seem to care so much about… care that appears to miraculously disappear once that child is born.