Julie Deardorph at the Chicago Tribune reports on a mother in Nevada, Anne Swanson, who threw a boo-hoo fit after giving birth because her hospital wouldn’t allow her to eat her placenta.

Deardorph is feelin’ Swanson’s pain — although she claims she wouldn’t do it, she thinks mothers ought to be able to eat their own organs:

Mother goats do it. Rats do it.

Yeah, and dogs eat their own shit too. Other animals also eat each other. What’s your point?

(It’s always The Man trying to prevent woman from eating their own organs! Damn them!!)

But I do think if you want your placenta, for whatever reason, you should be able to have it. There are no laws barring hospitals from providing placentas to patients and if she doesn’t have HIV or hepatitis, what’s the risk? Meanwhile, we let people put more troubling things in their mouths every day, including cigarettes and hot dogs.

So let’s understand the logic — Deardorph demands rights for people to eat their own organs based on the fact that people eat hot dogs?

Perhaps Ms. Placenta Rights is not in the know…there is a reason why hospitals have hazardous waste systems in which blood, organs and other bodily fluids are thrown out in regulated form, with regulated procedure. It’s a public health issue. You cannot allow people to just take home the organs of their choice, to cuddle with it at night or to feed it to their families. Disease can spread rapidly. Organs are contaminated and when not transported correctly, can potentially be a threat as bacteria grows.

Apparently, Hawaii does have a law that releases placentas to mothers for religious reasons, although perhaps it is still illegal to release it for purposes of ingesting it (how they would determine the end purpose, who knows). All I can say is thankfully Hawaii is separated from the mainland by a vast amount of ocean.

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