Choice Interrupted - Planned Parenthood

Choice Interrupted - Planned Parenthood supports a woman's right to choose.

The ChiTrib's Steve Chapman notes:

As Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Gloria Feldt puts it, "We stand for the principle that women--in consultation with their families and their physicians--should make their own reproductive and health decisions. Not politicians and not the government."

But this week, they changed their minds.

Not about abortion. On that intimate issue of women's physical autonomy, they still believe the government should get out and stay out.

That's right. The woman's right to make their own reproductive decisions apparently has limits:

But when it comes to breast implants, they think women can't be trusted to decide for themselves. On the former question, they sound like hard-core libertarians. On the latter, they are models of intrusive paternalism.

The piece shows the dichotomy, noting:

In 1999, a committee of experts commissioned by the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, issued a report saying, "Some women with breast implants are indeed very ill, and the IOM panel is very sympathetic to their distress. However, it can find no evidence that these women are ill because of their implants." The only real safety problems, it found, involve ruptures, infections and hardening of breast tissue--problems that also exist for saline implants, which were not banned.

The exonerating evidence ought to satisfy reasonable people. But when the government reopened the issue, the Feminist Majority Foundation objected: "Another generation of women should not suffer because the FDA has bowed to pressure from manufacturers and plastic surgeons." The federal government, it said, "must protect women from silicone gel breast implants." The National Organization for Women raised the same alarm.

You thought medical choices should be left to patients and physicians? You thought it was a woman's body and a woman's choice? When it comes to implants, those hallowed principles are nowhere to be found among "pro-choice" activists.

It's an interesting read...

Posted by Mitch at October 20, 2003 06:00 AM