Is pregnancy a disease?

Life Report recently did a brief discussion of the "pregnancy as a disease" model championed by, among others, abortionist Warren Hern.

Hern and his fellows hold that pregnancy is a sexually transmitted disease, the "cure" for which is abortion.

But pregnancy hardly fits a disease model. A disease, by its very nature, is dis-ease. Nobody is happy to be diseased. Nobody calls their friends and family to express delight at a diagnosis of cancer or diabetes. Even lesser, self-limiting diseases, such as chickenpox or the flu, don't elicit the joy that pregnancy often does. Even the schoolchild glad for the respite from school or the worker happy to have some time off the job doesn't delight in the pox or flue per se; he or she is only pleased at the enforced time of rest, and not directly with the disease.

So it's not the pregnancy itself that women are seeking "treatment" for at abortion facilities. It is their distress at the pregnant state.

Many people are distressed enough to seek medical treatment for things that are, of themselves, perfectly normal. This is what keeps cosmetic surgeons driving Porches. There was nothing inherently wrong, say, with Michael Jackson's nose. The problem was that he was upset about his nose. Had the doctor treated this distress -- with a referral to a competent psychiatrist -- rather than treating the nose itself as if it was a disease, Jackson's life no doubt would have gone down a much less tragic path.

So clearly pregnancy -- a state that leads many women to rejoice -- is not itself the "disease."

Let's look, then, at the distress that leads women to climb on the abortion table. Is it a disease that is best treated by abortion? Is it, like Michael Jackson's distress about his nose, a sign that there is a psychological problem? Or is it something else entirely? I'll be looking at this in successive blog posts. Give me your thoughts, pro or con the "pregnancy as a disease" model.