To Pee or Not to Pee

I first heard it on the radio as I was driving to work the other night. The next day it was front-page news in the paper. No, I’m not talking about the current upheaval in Canadian parliament (although that WAS on the same page). I’m talking about pregnancy tests. Yes, you read that correctly – pregnancy tests. On the front page. Apparently, it is now possible to purchase a pregnancy test for a buck at the dollar store. Well, at one particular chain of dollar stores anyway. Normally, we would have to pay anywhere from 8 to 16 times as much to buy one in a pharmacy. I’m thinking that a dollar sounds a whole lot more within most people’s reach. Health Canada is thinking that it needs to investigate this heinous bargain. It seems that, even though the distributor of these same tests has been selling about 10 million a year in U.S. discount stores, they have not been “approved” for sale in Canada. Approved? What’s to APPROVE? YOU PEE ON A STICK! How is that a health concern? Men have been peeing on sticks, branches, rocks, leaves and other assorted items in the great outdoors for years and no one seems to give a rat’s ass about the “safety” of that. I’d be more concerned about brown patches in the grass. In any case, Health Canada is going to look into these tests and potentially pull them off the shelves. WELL! Hoping to ensure my own urinary security, I poured over the article in the paper. I have obviously neglected to inform myself on the dangers of inserting a stick into a stream that is destined to do a swirly into the sewage system anyway. What I found was absolutely NO mention of why a pregnancy test needs “health” approval. Apparently, at issue is the NAME on the product’s packaging. The manufacturer (a Canadian company) has a “medical device licence” that it received from Health Canada in 2001. The product name on the dollar store tests doesn’t match the name on the certificate. The distributor and manufacturer have said openly that they have an agreement to package the product under different names for different clients. This makes absolute sense to me. I mean, who is naïve enough to believe that the generic, o-shaped oat cereal their kids eat every morning isn’t exactly the same generic, o-shaped oat cereal sold at another supermarket as “their” brand. It’s marketing, people, and they do it to best appeal to whatever demographic regularly marches through their front door. What really got me was the opinion expressed by the spokesperson for the Canadian Pharmaceutical Association. She is concerned about the “wisdom of selling a product that could change a person’s life in a discount store.” Her implication was that we need a pharmacist to sell us a pregnancy test so they can also tell us how and why it works. Jeeeeeeez. Give us a little credit. If I’m pregnant, my life is changing whether I find out from the dollar store, the pharmacy or Madam Vesuvius and her crystal ball. I can READ. I can FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. I’ve been PEEING MY WHOLE LIFE. I don’t need anyone to hold my hand – OR the stick, for that matter. This isn’t about pregnant or potentially pregnant women. This is about MONEY. Plain and simple. No one wants to see his or her inflated profit margins pissed away. Women use home pregnancy tests to confirm suspicions. Most know that these tests (and blood tests too) simply pick up on a hormone (called hCG) that women produce when they become pregnant. Basically, you’re cranking it out or you’re not. We don’t expect them to be 100% accurate. They’re just a first step – one that we would like to affordably take in the privacy of our own bathrooms. Every woman I know that has ever taken a home test and gotten a positive result, immediately called her doctor or healthcare provider. That seems sensible to me. It’s a pretty rock solid assumption that a woman taking a pregnancy test has already been screwed at least once. Does that give everyone else the right to demand their turn?