Hating and Fearing Doctors

I wonder why so many people are driven to extremely unreasonable actions that often put their own lives at risk by their inexplicable dread of doctors. This is a sentiment that hugely inspires the whole home-birth movement. Home-birthing websites indulge in endless fantasies about doctors going to incredible lengths to harm the woman and her child during the process of childbirth. Why any doctor would want to harm a patient is never explained.

The same sentiment informs Ross Douthat's latest article on voluntary euthanasia. The journalist creates images of plug-pulling doctors who are happy to end lives of sick patients. Why doctors would want to kill off people indiscriminately remains a mystery. Everybody knows that a doctor whose patients keep dying all over the place will not be very successful in her chosen field. As in any profession, there might be all kinds of maniacs among doctors, but for the most part, doctors want to save lives and not end them.

Douthat's dislike of the concept of euthanasia is not limited to his distrust of doctors. His main enemies - here as well as in every other aspect of human life - are freedom and choice. In euthanasia, Douthat says, "the goal is perfect autonomy, perfect control, and absolute freedom of choice." And for him, these are very bad things. God forbid people should have any rights over deciding what happens to their own bodies.

It's curious how the hatred of the medical profession brings together such unlikely groups as rabid conservatives and feminists. The feminist belief in the woman's right to her own body sometimes degenerates into the unhealthy idea that it's ok to deprive women of quality healthcare during childbirth. I'm sure Douthat's hatred of women would lead him to support home-birthers.

Home Births as a Feminist Cause

I've been trying very hard to understand why home births have become a feminist cause. Don't get me wrong, I believe that if women want to give birth at home (or anywhere else), they should have that right. Having a variety of choices is always a good thing. I would be eager to defend women's right to choose to have a home birth or a hospital birth or a scheduled C-section.

What I don't get, though, is why it's now considered to be a feminist and a progressive thing to advocate home births as one of THE feminist causes par excellence. I'd say that home births are a rather patriarchal choice (albeit, a legitimate one). The idea that things that pertain to women should be relegated to the home is hardly a progressive one. You need to do your female thing, such as give birth, breastfeed, or menstruate? Go hide at home because public spaces are reserved for really important things. Home births exclude women from all the possibilities of modern medicine, as if women were some kind of second-class citizens. They are also pretty dangerous. (Dr. Amy Tuteur gives a lot of data on that in her great blog.)

People have tried to explain to me that the feminist desire to avoid hospital births is motivated by women's distrust of patriarchal medical institutions. Hiding from these institutions in your home, however, does not seem like a very feminist solution to me. It would equal removing ourselves from politics, for example, since the political world is male-dominated and patriarchal. Of course, we should work to make the field of medical care more women-friendly.