EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- Rise Up or Die
- Rallying Cry: Citizens Worldwide to Unite in 'March Against Monsanto'
- A 'Nonviolent Army of Love' Rises in North Carolina to Face Down Rightwing's Assault on Progress
- The Latest Lie: IRS Targeted Conservatives
- Genetically Modified Democracy: Monsanto and Congress Move to Stomp on Your Rights
Popular content
Today's Top News
A Doctor Speaks: "Horrific" Arizona Law Would Allow Doctors to Practice Bad Medicine Without Accountability
Imagine carrying a baby to term. You’ve waited nine long months for this moment. You’ve planned for her arrival, you’ve had the baby shower, and you’ve gone to all your prenatal appointments. All along you are told that you are progressing normally and your baby is healthy. Your delivery day comes and, at delivery, your doctor tells you your baby has a devastating abnormality. A cardiac defect or a severe structural abnormality or chromosomal abnormality... something that was likely already detected early in your pregnancy.
Nancy Barto (R-Phoenix)
You then discover your doctor withheld this information from you for fear you would seek an abortion. What a nightmare.
Unfortunately, the Arizona legislation is working to make this nightmare a reality. On Tuesday, the Senate passed a bill that would prohibit any medical malpractice lawsuits against physicians who chose to withhold valuable information regarding their patient’s pregnancy that could lead her and her family to seek termination. Much to my chagrin, this type of legislation is already law in Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Utah, Idaho, Pennsylvania, North Dakota, South Dakota, and is being discussed in Kansas.
But fear not! Nancy Barto (R-Phoenix), who sponsored the bill, has allowed for medical malpractice suits for “intentional or grossly negligent” acts. I would be interested to hear where Senator Barto draws her line of allowable omissions and unacceptable exclusions.
Although I am not a lawyer, I am a doctor and what this law is proposing is horrific and against everything we, as physicians, learn throughout medical school and our training.
My role as a physician, specifically an Obstetrician and Gynecologist, is to provide my patients with safe, quality care, and to provide them with information to help them make informed decisions. I may follow my patients through their pregnancy and deliver their children, but I do not participate in the care of that child or share the responsibilities in raising the child. Viewing a patient’s ultrasound of her pregnancy and knowingly omitting information that could change her and her family’s life is unimaginable. And it is malpractice.
I respect my patients, I trust them to make the best decision for themselves and their families, and I trust my colleagues to do the same. I, as a physician, have no right to make medical decisions for my patients based purely on what I think is best or based on my religious beliefs.
As physicians, it is our job to inform patients, not make decisions for them.
This bill will move to the Arizona House at an undetermined time.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
21 Comments so far
Show AllThis is just one of the many reasons I absolutely refuse to vote on anyone with a "R" in front of their name. That wasn't always the case, but with this new breed of Republican candidates it's my new rule. To think you have the right to decide what is right for everyone is just beyond comprehension.
I'm with you. Until the 2000 farce called an election, I'd voted for the person I considered best for the job, regardless of party. Never again.
What gets me about the right deciding what's right for everyone else, at the same time they're making all this noise about the left trying to take their rights away. Like the mad frenzy to buy more guns and ammo when Obama was elected, because "he's going to take away our guns!" And now it's the left denying them their constitutional rights of freedom of religion.
Just a big smoke screen to befuddle the easily befuddled Democrats, while they're busily destroying the whole country.
I think it is Tennessee where voters are 71% born-again xians. Pretty soon it will be compulsory to be born twice.
"As physicians, it is our job to inform patients, not make decisions for them."
.......Yes, but not in a fascist-run state.
Exactly, If you are paying for medical services it is discriminatory to prohibit who has a right to your basic health information. Additionally, who would benefit from your health tests if you are excluded from knowing the results or giving informed consent.
In the highly unlikely event that legislation in any Canadian province gave a physician legal immunity for such a reprehensible lapse in ethics, that doctor would still lose the right to practise. The College of Physicians and Surgeons is charged with protection of patients' rights above all else and would remove that doctor's licence. Is that not true in the U.S.?
People must be forthright in questioning their prenatal care. If this legislation is passed, patients should demand straight answers at the first visit. If the doctor lies, no legislation will protect him/her.
A young couple once visited me in early pregnancy looking for a family doctor. Their religion didn't allow the use of blood products and they wanted my view. I told them that I would adhere to their wishes regarding their care, but that if the babe required blood products for some reason I'd seek to make it a ward of the court and do what was required to save it. They found another doctor.
In the U.S., the Gov't enforces and maintains the medical monopoly. I would be surprised (pleasantly, of course) if any medical organizations took a stand on this.
Who is the greater evil?
Republicans often complain about Big Government meddling in their personal lives, yet this invasion of the privacy that should be part of a patient's relationship with her doctor is one of the biggest pieces of meddling I've heard. Their goal, as expressed during the birth control debate by Mitch McConnell (but not in these words), is to UNCONSTITUTIONALLY enshrine in law the beliefs of one religion, with the rest of entire population required to base their actions on a belief they do not share. (Aren't the Rs the same ones who are always worried to death that somehow Sharia law will be enacted in the US? How is right-wing fundamentalist Christianity okay when Sharia is not?)
Cause pepsi is better than coke... Or is that the other way around???
If it is true that Minnesota has this law in place I'd like to start a movement to change it, but I can't find information at the NARAL site. I am just stunned to read this and actually I am having a hard time believing that it is correct. Could anyone provide info re the Minnesota law? Thanks.
Given the list of states the author mentions, I think she is referring to all the states that have some form of ban on "wrongful birth" lawsuits. If so, then what the author says is misleading, because it is very unlikely that any of these statutes are intended to allow a doctor to withhold information or actually lie to a patient. These laws are intended to bar a lawsuit when the doctor *fails to detect* a fetal abnormality in time for the woman to abort.
For example, the fetus has a serious genetic abnormality that would have led the mother to abort if she had known about it. Amniocentesis would have revealed the abnormality, but the doctor did not believe that procedure was warranted because the woman was relatively young and had no obvious other problems.
Minnesota does have a law, dating back to the early 1980s, that bars the mother from suing in the sort of case I just described. But this proposed Arizona law goes much further than this, in allowing a doctor to actually lie to his patient about the condition of the fetus. Since that quite obviously violates a basic obligation the doctor owes to her, I think it very unlikely that the existing Minnesota law would bar the woman from suing in such a case.
Here is a reference:
www.marriagelawfoundation.org/publications/UFFL%20Chapter.pdf
I'm beginning to think this entire article is a crock. Here is the text of the Arizona bill. Judge for yourself if it permits a doctor to lie in order to prevent the woman from aborting:
www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/sb1359s.pdf
Clauses A and B prevent wrongful birth and wrongful life suits, in language similar, for example, to the Minnesota law I referred to above in my reply to gandydancer. Though the wording of "an act or ommission" might appear broad, this appearance is immediately removed by clause D, which clearly says that we are not talking about intentional acts. Since lying is ipso facto an intentional act, the bill clearly does not permit doctors to lie to their patients with impunity. It seems to be intended merely to block suits of the kind I described in my post above. You may not agree with laws that do that, but there are good reasons why even many people who are pro-choice are queasy about such suits.
BTW, I also looked at the Kansas bill, and as far as I can tell, it does not specifically exempt intentional acts. So the ire being aimed at Arizona should be re-directed to Kansas.
Thanks for the info oisin. This article should never have been published at this site. You'd think that the people that edit Common Dreams would have noticed that some claims just did not seem quite right.
Knowing Arizona, they'll make an exception if you're carrying a Mexican-American baby.
"I, as a physician, have no right to make medical decisions for my patients based purely on what I think is best or based on my religious beliefs."
Nobody has a right to make any decision for anybody else, except for those unable. But the great enabler of the people's oppression is the philosophy that requires us to reject the statement I just made as "inferior". The statement I made, the blanket rule, conveys "irrationality" according to liberal doctrine, while the statement, quoted above, made by the physician conveys a pretense of "thoughtful consideration", according to liberal doctrine.
But it goes nowhere. Attached to nothing real. Absolutely disconnected from the people's truth.
The big news today is that the people are re-learning to occupy their own minds, and seeing liberal doctrine for what it is: A big confusing lie, based not in reality, but in a self-justifying tangle of misdirecting memes that lead to nowhere.
The reality of human nature is that we need blanket rules, as exemplified above, because only the blanket rule keeps our heads above water, empowering us to manage our own affairs, without elite interference. Our truth is something we CREATE OURSELVES, something that maximizes the value of all things that resonate/harmonize together in a positive direction. Our truth MUST serve our own personal BETTER interests, if we are to thrive. Wisdom of the ages for mass self-determination. Exciting times for the people. Death knell for elites.
Note that what's implicit in her argument is that there actually ARE physicians who would act in the way that she describes as horrific. I wonder what the stats are within the practicing physician (or ob/gyn) population for those who would allow their religious beliefs to inform their practice? Medicine as practiced in the U.S. can still be quite conservative, even today.
"Viewing a patient’s ultrasound of her pregnancy and knowingly omitting information that could change her and her family’s life is unimaginable."
Thanks, Dr. Evans. 'First, do no harm' should apply, first and foremost, to the already living, NOT to the 'kidney-bean-sized' fetus. While the fetus may, or may not, be alive, it is less aware of the cruel beauty of life than your average steer, and I eat cow all the time. Shackling a mother to a lifetime of servitude so that she may bring a severely deformed child to some measure of contentment is the kind of 'Doctor-knows-best' disregard that can result in lethal payback. I'm a guy: if a doctor took that decision away from me and my wife, that doctor would not be able to practice medicine again, and I don't care HOW many laws I'd have to break to make that happen. Shame on Barto for using politics to make that inevitable conflict between Evangelical doctors and enraged parents happen.
If such a law were passed, it would be relatively easy to demand a full-and-timely-information contract from the physician...and to publicly post the names of those who wouldn't so undertake.
"I respect my patients, I trust them to make the best decision for themselves and their families, and I trust my colleagues to do the same. I, as a physician, have no right to make medical decisions for my patients based purely on what I think is best or based on my religious beliefs."
"As physicians, it is our job to inform patients, not make decisions for them. "
Since the untra sound and the related medical data are freely and legally available to the patient what do politicians and physicians plan to do to address the very likely event that one or more patients will have the medical record and data (including untra sound) reviewed before it gets that far?
Once I found out that me and or mine were mislead by anyone especially a physician what legislation do you think would prevent the dissemination of the breach of trust and the name of that physician as well as the name of his/her practice?
Patients talk and once that information is out (think internet) like tooth paste it ain't going back in the tube. People in these circumstances don't get even ... they get ahead.