Is birth control the mother of all medical malpractice?
by Kelli
You would have a good case for malpractice if your doctor recommended a bone marrow transplant for your common cold. How much better a case would there be if you didn’t even have a cold? In the case of no disease, the prescription of chemicals with side effects and long-term health risks — for any reason except fertility — would be considered inexcusable by any medical standard….
I hear the push-back from women who, like me, are or were using hormonal birth control to manage symptoms of dysmenorrhea, endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome, or other conditions. I offer for your consideration this question: is birth control so good at relieving your symptoms that it’s easier to delay the onerous diagnostics that could lead to a potential cure for your underlying disease?
Your doctor, who barely spends half an hour a year with you, may be great, but she and the pharmaceutical industry have no financial incentive to steer you in a direction that would reduce your dependence on them. If you don’t resist the inertia of the status quo, nobody else will. For years, I was so grateful for the convenient symptom relief of hormonal birth control, I put off the much more complicated task of diagnosing and treating my endometriosis and ovulation defects until it was too late.
~ Katy French Talento, The Federalist, January 5
[Photo via zuendschwein.de]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.