Thoughtful advocacy for pregnant women

AWB is so on top of things today; she introduces me to an organization I'd never even hear of (they're going to revoke my public health card!) - National Advocates for Pregnant Women. Check out their mission statement:

National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW) works to secure the human and civil rights, health and welfare of all women, focusing particularly on pregnant and parenting women, and those who are most vulnerable - low income women, women of color, and drug-using women. NAPW seeks to ensure that women do not lose their constitutional and human rights as a result of pregnancy, that addiction and other health and welfare problems they face during pregnancy are addressed as health issues, not as crimes; that families are not needlessly separated, based on medical misinformation; and that pregnant and parenting women have access to a full range of reproductive health services, as well as non-punitive drug treatment services. By focusing on the rights of pregnant women, NAPW broadens and strengthens the reproductive justice, drug policy reform, and other interconnected social justice movements in America today.

As AWB points out,

NAPW is unique in that it combines the efforts and talents of pro-choice activists and of doulas, midwives, and other health care providers. The idea is to take back control of the rhetoric surrounding pregnancy choices from those who would argue that, as long as there is a zygote involved, the woman loses all autonomy. The dehumanization of pregnant women divides all their health choices into the state-sanctioned "correct" and the state-condemned illegal. We need to develop strategies of education that help pregnant women realize they do have choices; they do not become the property of the state the instant they get knocked up.

Life, and choices and responsibilities, get very complicated very quickly once a woman gets pregnant. For those uncomfortable with the black and white presentation of choice vs. life anti-choice, this organization appears to provide a nice, broad spectrum of care and concern for the health of women and their babies.

The problem, as I see it, the thing that makes the abortion debate (and really, any debate about reproductive health) so incredibly difficult, is that it's a totally unique situation. Our available resources, the language we use to talk about morality and ethics and right and wrong, struggle with issues of pregnancy specifically because two lives are so inextricably tangled. At what point are those two lives one and at what point are they two? I don't know. How do you weigh the cost and value of each of those lives? I don't know. How do you care for and protect both those lives? I don't know. What I think is that specifically because this issue is so complex, because there are always going to be endless extra circumstances and contexts (is the health of the woman at stake? was she raped? is the embryo/child healthy?) it's impossible to pass any sort of blanket legislation that fairly treats every pregnant woman. Every pregnant woman must be treated for what she is - a distinct, human life. With (the potential for) a distinct human life growing inside her. Which is precisely why each of these decisions, and, I'd argue, most actions revolving around reproductive health, should be private, and should be between women and their doctors (and, ideally, fathers). Any attempt to make rules and regulations beyond available, quality healthcare that apply to all are inevitably going to be inequitable.