By Joona Räsänen.
Pregnancy shares many similarities with conditions we classify as diseases. In our new paper, “Is Pregnancy a Disease? A Normative Approach,” published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, we suggest that there are several reasons why pregnancy should be classified as a disease.
Like other diseases, pregnancy causes a wide range of symptoms, ranging from minor discomfort to life-threatening conditions. Similar to other diseases, its symptoms can be alleviated with medical care and advice. Like other diseases, pregnancy can be cured or treated altogether. For instance, abortion could be regarded as an effective cure for the early stages of pregnancy, and a caesarean section as a treatment for pregnancy in its later stages.
Diseases are often caused by pathogens—organisms from outside the patient’s body, such as viruses or bacteria, that invade the body and infects it. Pregnancy, too, is caused by a pathogen: a sperm that invades the female body and leads to impregnation.
As with other diseases, preventive medicine can be used to avoid contracting the condition. During the recent pandemic, people wore face masks to prevent catching COVID-19. Similarly, individuals use protective equipment like condoms and intrauterine contraceptive devices to avoid getting pregnant. If and when people become pregnant, they typically seek medical care and usually give birth in a hospital—a facility primarily designed to treat diseases.
Since the symptoms of pregnancy can be alleviated by medical care, pregnancy itself can be treated with medicine, getting pregnant can be prevented with medical technology, and given that giving birth is one of the most common reasons for hospitalization, with caesarean section being one of the most common medical procedures, and considering that the main purpose of medicine is precisely to diagnose, prevent, treat, and cure diseases, shouldn’t we consider pregnancy a disease?
Certainly, the issue is more complex than proposed here. In our paper, we address objections against the view of pregnancy as a disease. However, we conclude that defining diseases in a way that excludes pregnancy while including all the prime examples of conditions we typically classify as diseases is not without problems.
Paper title: Is pregnancy a disease? A normative approach
Authors: Anna Smajdor1 & Joona Räsänen2
Affiliations: 1University of Oslo, Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas
2University of Turku, Department of Philosophy, Contemporary History and Political Science, and Turku Institute for Advanced Studies
Competing interests: None to declared