What Intelligent Design?

Ever had to argue with someone who claims that feminism is evil because their god has a plan for women - and that plan is for us to stay at home knocked-up for most of our adult lives? Because everything that is 'natural' (except for homosexuality, of course) conforms to a perfect plan for humanity? Yup - if you try to buck the system with your birth control pills, you are committing a sin, because your body has been intelligently designed by a benevolent creator who knows what's best for you.

Or has it?

Denialism Blog seems to think that the female reproductive system is one of the best arguments against intelligent design, and I have to say that I agree. According to Mark:

Ideally reproductive systems and waste removal equipment shouldn't share space or have a such proximity to each other increasing risk of infection. The pelvis could do with some widening so women could actually deliver kids without killing themselves a significant portion of the time. Further, pregnancy in humans results in a fetus sitting on the bladder and colon for several months (and vaginal delivery acutely injures these muscles), as a result, post-partum many women have difficulty with urinary incontinence, and with age and with more kids the greater the risk of incontinence (this can not be prevented by c-section - so the damage is likely from positioning of the fetus on top of the bladder rather than acute trauma during birth). This unfortunate arrangement of the uterus appears to be a result of the change from walking on all fours to walking upright, the fetus, which would ordinarily sit mostly on the wall of the abdomen, ends up sitting directly on internal organs.

Was part of the plan high morbidity rates and life long urinary incontinence? Because that sounds rather like a dumb plan to me, and not very benevolent. Instead of thinking of family planning methods and modern life-saving medicine as thumbing our noses at an either incompetent or simply mean designer deity, I prefer to think we are using our own intelligence to get around some evolutionary flaws. And so should you.