by Penny Phillip

Created on: November 13, 2008   Last Updated: July 27, 2009

I'll give you a hint: men don't have babies! Granted, they do have some baby-making apparatus, but nowhere near as extensive as what women have. By the time we get to discussing the baby-housing and baby-feeding body parts, they're pretty much out of the contest already.

Other than reproductive organs, men and women share basically similar anatomy though proportions and build differ. So the issue is really one of need, rather than one of equality. Women's hospitals exist for the same reasons Ob/Gyn's exist, because there are so many medical conditions unique to women.

It's not an exaggeration to say that each one of a woman's reproductive organs (breasts, uterus, tubes, ovaries, cervix, vagina and the stuff that holds all of these parts in place) could probably support a medical specialty of its own. Compared to that a man's plumbing, though pretty impressive itself, has fewer parts that could malfunction or become diseased.

Pregnancy is a whole other story because all of the above-mentioned organs undergo changes which may be so drastic as to render them unrecognizable. The pregnant state comes not only with the oft-described blooming and happy barefooted-ness, but with a myriad of diseases and disorders unique to childbearing. There is no comparable condition in men, which would merit a whole hospital floor to be dedicated to it's care.

Then we get to the change of life stage, where hormone levels plummet and once-working parts fall into disrepair or fall out altogether! Of course, men age too; it's just that they have less body parts to undergo deterioration or to develop cancer in. By retirement age, the average woman has had at least one surgical procedure on her tubes, uterus, ovaries or breasts, even if she has never borne a child. There is just no male comparison.

I haven't even talked yet about the mammograms, Pap smears, pelvic or breast exams. I was careful to avoid mentioning the actual delivery of babies because most men today gallantly brave the ordeal of the delivery room, risking loss of consciousness, concussion and worse.

No offense my brothers, but if you had to be poked and prodded in intimate places while placed in embarrassingly awkward positions (rectal exams don't count - we have them too), you'd be glad for the privacy of a men's hospital. Rather than thinking it unfair, you should rejoice that there is not a need for men's hospitals...

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