Red Tent Sisters

MEDICALIZATION OF FERTILITY

In a recent edition of a women’s magazine I came across this advertisement. It immediately grabbed my attention because of the birth control pack at the top … here are a few of my thoughts.

My first reaction was that it both creates and responds to the current socio-political context in North America where women’s ability to reproduce has been medicalized. The pill pack represents attempts to medically control fertility and the supplement bottle represents the increasing medicalization of getting and being pregnant.

It is also an example of how intertwined the processes of medicalization and commercialization are; in other words the extent to which “health” has become something we achieve through commodities.

Lastly, the advertisement “works” because of the normalization of the birth control pill. [And let’s not forget that, although the ad features a generic birth control pill package, there are actually many, many types of birth control pills.] If only a few women were on the pill[s] then the advertisement would be a waste – it would be speaking to a very small target audience. Because a lot of females are on the pill[s] the advertisement speaks to a large audience. If women aren’t on the pill[s] themselves they probably know other females who are and as a result the ad is most likely interpreted as addressing the “normal” female population.

Interestingly the advertisement does hint at the fact that women who come off of the pill[s] may need some assistance to be “healthy” pregnant women. However, because the photo on the label features a woman with a baby the ad doesn’t address the fact that some [many?] women have difficulty conceiving or at least have difficulty regulating their menstrual cycles after they have been on the pill[s].

That’s all for now … E.

# posted by Kim Sedgwick @ 5:39 PM