‘Reproductive health’ is about neither

The corrosion of language always has a coercive effect. In our editorial last month, we examined how pregnant women lose so much freedom in the name of “choice,” how the very rhetoric of “choice” puts a perverse pressure on expectant mothers to end their nascent offspring’s life.

The use of this kind of euphemistic veil of words to cover the harsh, misogynistic realities of modern society is neither surprising nor unprecedented. Instead, the systematic abuse of language is a hallmark of the intellectually bankrupt and morally degenerate ideology of the post-Christian world.

Against the tyranny of terminology, one must continually foment the perpetual rebellion of free speech and clear thought; to this end, we will consider, this month, another insidious term.

“Reproductive health” – this amorphous, anodyne phrase evokes only the most vague ideas as to its possible meaning. However, the term refers neither to pregnancy nor to childbearing, nor to the changes and challenges wrought by both youth and age. Instead, it refers almost exclusively to abortion and contraception.

Indeed, “reproductive health” is not concerned about reproduction at all, but the prevention of reproduction. In fact, the ideal state of “reproductive health” – according to its misguided practitioners – is being free from reproduction altogether.

In the Gospels, we find the dictum, “What God has joined, let no man rent asunder” (Mt 19:6). But modern “reproductive” medicine seeks to do just this by keeping the conjugal act from its natural end. If the family is the molecule of society, the advocates of amoral medicine seek to split the very atoms which constitute it.

Activists and politicians who speak earnestly about “reproductive health issues” are not advocating the eradication of problems in the developing world, but the propagation of the West’s pathologies. And educators who agitate for greater “awareness” about such issues among teenagers would have them learn that promiscuity is more “healthy” than procreation.

Indeed, to achieve so-called “reproductive health,” one must maximize the occasions of sexual encounters, while, at the same time, eliminating the occurrence of conception or birth. And this contentious moral position is not only clothed in the neutrality of science, but is advertised to young women as normal, healthy behaviour.

Because “reproductive health” has become identical with women’s health, all other research into different areas of women’s health has been neglected. But this myopic fixation has not only prevented other research from being done but, in a terrible irony, has produced its own epidemics.

The unhealthy advocacy of “reproductive health” has produced the inevitable results of its bad advice: virulent sexually transmitted infections must now be fought with experimental vaccines, to say nothing of the pandemic of psychological harm, emotional abuse, painful memories and regret, which runs rampant among the credulous victims of the culture of casual sex.

All of these unhealthy results are produced by the problematic, contentious definition of “health” assumed by those who believe that moral proscriptions are shackles to be thrown off. And so, in an effort to make medicine free of any moral norms, the basic facts of good health and common sense have been overlooked. The essential question, however, remains unasked: is it healthy for women to have multiple sexual partners? Or is the behaviour encouraged by traditional morality healthier than the practices prescribed under the banner of “reproductive health”?

The primary purpose of traditional morality has always been the protection and indeed, the health of its members – a lesson that has been relearned the hard way by too many in our society and at such a high cost. But, even as the adverse consequences mount, the advocates of social liberalism see no problem in turning teenagers into libertines.

In the name of “health,” diseases are being spread. Modern society must now face the consequences of its depraved experiment of a medicine without morality: it is a painful reality that deceptive labels cannot remedy and cheerful attitudes cannot heal.