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Kansas to Pregnant Women: "A Little Lie from Your Doctor Won't Hurt You"
It's what every pregnant woman I know dreads. Going into that big ultrasound, having the ultrasound tech, who had been so chatty, suddenly go silent. Having her do sweep after sweep across your belly without saying another word, until finally, she gets up and solemnly says, "I am going to get the doctor."
As far as pregnancy nightmares go, I thought that was one of the worst. But now politicians in Kansas are giving pregnant women and their partners something new to worry about. Buried in a sweeping anti-abortion bill is a provision that would immunize a doctor who discovers that a baby will be born with a devastating condition and deliberately withholds that information from his patient. That's right. If the bill passes, a doctor who opposes abortion could decide to lie about the results of your blood tests, your ultrasound, your cvs or your amnio. Lie to you so that you won't have information that might lead you to decide to end your pregnancy or that might lead you to learn more about your child's condition so that you are prepared to be the best parent you can be to your child.
Now, I have been working for a long time defending the right of a pregnant woman to make the best decision for herself and her family, whether that is continuing the pregnancy, adoption, or abortion, based on full, accurate information. I thought I had seen just about every manner of government intrusion into those fundamentally personal and private decisions. I thought I was past the point of being shocked and outraged. But as a mother who has been through those ultrasounds myself, the thought that my doctor could choose to withhold this information from me and take this decision away from me and my husband ... well, let's just say it really touched a nerve.
And, unfortunately, it's not just Kansas. Other states motivated by anti-abortion zeal are jumping on the it's-ok-for-doctors-to lie-to-their-patients-to-prevent-them-from-having-an-abortion bandwagon. Oklahoma recently passed a similar law. And, the Arizona legislature is considering a similar bill.
But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Despite the rhetoric of anti-abortion politicians about how all these restrictions are necessary to ensure that women's decisions are well-informed, it's never been about that. Doctors who provide abortions already work hard to ensure that every woman has the information she needs to make the best decision for herself and her family. What these bills are about is politicians who think they know better than women and who are trying to impose their own views on abortion on a woman and her family regardless of the circumstances: That's what's behind those now infamous ultrasound bills in places like Virginia, Idaho, and Pennsylvania. That's what's behind the bills in Georgia and Arizona that would ban abortion at the point when a woman often learns about a devastating diagnosis. And that is what is behind so many of the other bills working their way through the state legislatures right now. The Kansas bill is, in a way, just more upfront about it.
Well, enough is enough. We may not all agree about abortion, but we can all agree that these decisions ought to be made by a woman and her family, not a politician. So, whether you are a man or a woman; whether you are already a parent or think you might become one in the future; whether you are blissfully pregnant or unhappily so, if you care about your right to make your own decisions, I ask that you help get the word out. Share this blog on Facebook and Twitter. Send an email with this link to the President of the Kansas Senate. Tell the politicians all over the country to stop interfering in a family's personal and private decisions.
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Show AllIf you take away the legal recourse, enraged parents will take the law into their own hands. Its immoral to knowingly shackle two parents to a lifetime of easing the life of a severely deformed child. Sooner or later, a case will come forward where the parents understand, clearly, WHO did this to them, and to their child. And once that becomes clear, if the legal path is not available, then the illegal path will be taken. These are the strongest emotions humans are capable of, those surrounding childbearing: people have killed over much less. Kansas legislators are placing potential parents and their doctors into inevitable, potentially deadly, conflict.
Provide a downloadable contract that binds the physician and all subordinate caregivers and clerical staff to provide full, timely information, imposing a $100M penalty, personally payable, for non-compliance. Post the names of those physicians who won't so undertake.
Absolutely, define in writing an agreement with your doctor to provide full transparent services or get another doctor. You don't have to agree these terms.
Too bad Lincoln didn't let the South secede and form the theocracy they always wanted.
Kansas was a fairly strong abolitionist state during the time of the Civil War.
Kansas became a state about the same time as the Civil War, 1861. They were still killing and removing indigenous people and running out Mormons too. It was a busy time.
I have often thought about that because there is such a divide that still exists, then I think that would not have solved the issue because we would probably be at war with them or they with us. Lucky we have a separation between the church and the state and can still enjoy some of that southern hospitality and great cooking.
Yes, of course. Those 'in the know' can take preemptive legal action. How many young parents does that cover? Indeed, they may actually agree with the Doctor preemptively imposing his religious beliefs upon their young family, since it matches their own. Ten years down the road, looking at the wreckage of their lives (not solely caused by their child - life is difficult in the BEST of times) they may feel differently. At that point, who are they going to blame, themselves? Or an arrogant evangelical doctor living with his third wife in a gated community? Someone who check in on them, now and then, to bemuse himself about the noose he placed over their necks?
These kinds of laws, that grant public autonomy upon certain 'preferred' of God's stewards, have disaster written all over them. Why? Because autonomy corrupts, absolutely, and every time. I don't care if you're a saint, if the gov't says you can make choices you don't have to pay for, that condemn someone else to a life of servitude: you're going to end up making those choices, because they satisfy your ego. Not right away, but eventually, you're going to run across someone who resents the egotistical casualness with which you ruined their lives. If legal recourse is then denied them, they will take whatever pleasure they can out of your misery, legal or not.
Intelligent points, taken, Ubrew. The thing is, our minds are formatted along the lines of subject matter, "the separation of disciplines," and so here posters discuss THIS issue; however, it's best to discuss this subject in alignment with the NDAA law. It all connects! Less and less freedom, and more and more authoritarian government intervention. Nor is it any coincidence that societies that fetishize the fetus also happen to be those that focus on war and macho conquests. The Nazis were not big fans of abortion, neither are the Taliban. And I've recently quoted Riane Eisler in her research results. These show that every time a nation cuts back on women's rights, it simultaneously ups the ante on war. You can ask how is that yet possible with all the "theaters" of combat already in motion... The answer is that the "Holy" land has a target placed on it by all fundamentalists. They're the same ones GUNNING for control of women's wombs and vaginal canals. AS IF they hold any moral high ground!
Mairead - that is already the contract between doctor and patient. Disclosure forms, waivers and permissions already exist, based on the absolute right of the patient to be fully informed, as do penalties. Doctors who go along with the political silliness ought to be exposed, shunned. Where is the AMA on this? I can't believe that they would tolerate or support political interference in the relationship between doctor and patient.
This issue will make for interesting medical ethics discussions in classrooms for many years to come. Anyway, I was always under the impression that physicians were not supposed to let their own religious convictions inform their practice. However, it appears as if there are physicians who choose to do so, even though it's not even professionally acceptable. Afterall, patients are paying for the medical services (only) - if patients wanted religion in the mix, they could just seek counseling from their own imams/priests/rabbis/whatever. Physicians who withhold information from their patients because of their own (the physicians') religious beliefs should be stripped of their licences.
Well said, WW. Medical staff who intrude their religious beliefs without at a minimum prominently warning prospective patients should be struck off. They've no business pretending to do science when they're really doing religion.
WW a great sentiment, but I do know of some physicians who refused to care for homosexual patients or treated them in a markedly different way than the heterosexual brand of patient. I do agree, however, that in a job discipline which relies on science based innovations and applied practices, religious views have no place whatsoever. If a physician can't or won't do that, they should advertise their relgious objections to every patient or become a faith healer.
About the homosexual patients - that is just awful, DF. I am sorry to hear about that. Agreed about religious physicians needing to identify themselves and take on the title of faith healer (and lose their licences, if the situation merits it).
Thanks, Mairead. Yes, good patient care should be about translating the science to patients, not withholding the science from patients (which sometimes happens inadvertently, anyway).
I shrink at the absolute madness of alleged Christians or other believers who have such a desire to increase the world's population that they act like this, while wars, imprisonment, poverty, land theft destroy the lives of LIVING humans already born, but the same people accept this horror.
Their thinking isn't that much different from those we are fighting in the Middle East. Only the term used for their "supreme being" is different. Otherwise there isn't much difference between Islam and Christian fundamentalists except that the Muslims have the power to behave the way they do, while Christian fundamentalists haven't reached that stage (yet).
If we allow these people who purport to be Christians to continue their immoral ways, they will eventually have the kind of power that fundamentalist Muslims have. Women will be considered property under the law, and allowed to be treated in any way that men deem necessary, and the ignorant women of our society will go along with their ideas just as they do now.
I'm very afraid of the future of our country. We are losing our democracy at a fast rate and are no longer considered the greatest democracy in the world. There are 17 countries right now that are more democratic than ours, and our race to the bottom won't stop.
These people aren't simply your garden variety misogynistic sociopaths, they are bonafide sadistic psychopaths. And apparently, proud of it.
I seriously doubt that withholding test results from a patient for the purpose of deceiving her would withstand a lawsuit in any rational court.
I hope that, in any state that passes such a law, the legal profession will run ads to advise that any woman who is the victim of such deception may be entitled to compensation including but not limited to lifetime support for a special needs child.
skeptimist -- Great idea!
A (civil) tort has four elements: Duty, Breach, Cause & Damages.
This law eliminates the "duty" of the doctor thus the patient has no cause for action and the judge would dismiss the case.
That is my sentiment EXACTLY! If these nut jobs want to force a woman to have an unwanted pregnancy for any reason, then they should have to shoulder the responsibily and cost of raising these children personally, and not through govt. subsidizing of any kind!!!
"Kansas was a fairly strong abolitionist state"...because of abolitionists like John Brown. Men (and women like Harriet Tubman) who knew that "mere talk" would never convince the slave-holders to change their ways. Which makes dealing with Republican's in the twenty-first century come to mind.
the right wing did two things at once "tort reform" and anti-abortion laws.
There should be lawsuit filed and the law put on hold
That's because the one relies on the other for protection. Tort reform has never been about protecting the consumer and everything about protecting the ones that stand to profit. Even the McDonald's coffee suit wasn't groundless. McDonald's had been warned repeatedly. They knew their coffee was too hot. I wonder how many cigarette suits would have been seen by courts if "tort reform" had been passed?
Too bad these doctors and evangelic right don't have to pay the cost of supporting these defective children for their lifetimes.
"defective children" I take exception to this term. It is dehumanizing and, on a political level, nonconstructive.
One should be suspicious when several state legislatures with very different demographics all seek essentially the same invidious reactionary agenda of disenfranchisement---as though they are working from the same playbook. It's an election year, a year when millions of dollars are pumped into diversionary "social issue" campaigns.
Some doctors are quite happy no longer living by the pre-1960s "The MD as GOD" syndrome. They tend to see medical practice as a partnership with the patient. OTOH, there are doctors younger than I am who are essentially authoritarian personalities whose stated opinions tend to be opaque: Was that a billing decision or a medical decision...? In the past couple of years I've encountered a GP and an internalist [sic] specialist whose psychological perspectives were pre-Freudian (meaning they were likely unaware of their own motives). Women are not the only ones who get unnecessarily probed in their "nether" parts, although in matters of pregnancy they obviously are more likely to be victimized. (I have twice been grossly misdiagnosed, by doctors using advanced equipment including "probes." They sought expensive surgery; I sought escape from their lack of wisdom. I'm still here, decades later.) (Women are encouraged these days to do their own "self-examinations" for breast cancer and other issues; why aren't men encouraged to perform their own prostate exams? "I can probe myself, thank you.")
Perhaps this orchestrated state-by-state pathological probe campaign has something to do with ALEC: the reactionary American Legislative Exchange Council. For starters, see:
www.thenation.com/article/161973/koch-connection
I know it is a tall order to expect a pregnant teen to suddenly become familiar with human health issues---esp. given the sad state of our educational system as well as today's religious/cultural inversion. I am beginning to understand the cultural issues behind the JFK assassination. Essentially the same as during the time of John Wilkes Booth. Slavery has always been about more than color; it's been about perpetuating advantage. Perhaps we could use some latter-day tech-savvy John Browns! Was that Julian Assange I just saw riding down Main Street on a horse of a different color? Beige? His chest bedecked by hijacked flash drives glowing in the sun like little tinkerbells of chicanery...
At first I didn't want to read about this "probing" legislative assault, probably because I am a man, but it hit a nerve. Perhaps we need to cauterize and seal the lips of these right-wing body snatchers with branding irons heated on their BBQ charcoal fires.
In half a century of adulthood, I have been hit by wave after wave of Reactionary Political Psychology, each one worse than the last, and each time the capacity of the Open-Minded Person to defend has become more disabled, because the Social Context has been systematically debased. What sort of people seek to limit Human Intercourse?
If you think about it, all our "machines" seek "control" of some form of expression of our existence. Today, there are mental machines in which the only moving parts are keyboarding and digitized electrons. It is a new world, but with the same old rotten failed System in charge.
It doesn't have to be this way.
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Very interesting post, Ole Man River. Your 2nd to last paragraph is most powerful... especially the observation about the the "social context" altering. The authoritarians are like a spreading cancer rotting the soul of our nation. What is more poisonous to the open mind than a faith-based presumption that you already know all that needs to be known, and are thus in a position to impose it onto others.
I believe it is critical to deeply understand that authoritarianism is a fundamental paradigm shaping our thoughts, emotions - and world.
I also believe that we can benefit enormously from understanding the concept of "paradigm" more thoroughly.
***
Eisler has offered a profound and beneficent distillation of some of our species’ core issues in her revolutionary book, The Chalice and the Blade. In it Eisler argues that human society, throughout time, has been organized according to two basic, and divergent sets of assumptions: “The first, which I call the dominator model, is what is popularly called patriarchy or matriarchy, - the ranking of one half of humanity over the other. The second, in which social relations are primarily based on the principle of linking rather than ranking, may best be described as the partnership model.”
It is important to grasp that the premises underlying a “dominator-based society” extend to all levels of interrelationship - from relationships involving two individuals (such as marriage) to ever-larger gatherings: the nuclear family, schools, businesses, religions, governments, and nations. Similar ideas have been elaborated in the pioneering work being done at the Stone Center at Wellesley College. The writings of Judith Jordan, Jean Baker Miller, Janet Surrey, and other feminist scholars clarify the salient differences between these two modes of being:
“In the ‘power-over’ or ‘power-for-oneself only’ model there is an assumption of an active agent exerting control that [arises from] an actual or threatened use of power, strengths or expertise…The alternative model of interaction that we are proposing might be termed ‘power-with’ or ‘power-together’... It suggest[s] that all participants in the relationship interact in ways that are based on connecting and enhancing everyone’s personal power.”
Eisler presents a contemporary overview of archeological data gathered from excavations of Neolithic human communities (ca. 10,000 BC); in her reassessment Eisler argues that a substantial amount evidence now exists which suggests that in prior eras a “partnership” form of social organization was the norm.
The work of Maria Gimbutas, for example, has strongly indicated that southeastern Europe held a flourishing partnership civilization from 6500 to 3500 BC. Similar to the form of Neolithic groups found in Crete, it would seem that the people of Old Europe developed complex religious, governmental, and economic systems without rigid sexual or class hierarchies. Women held high positions in the social order; between the sexes a basically egalitarian relationship prevailed – one, which indicated a division of labor, but not the superiority of either sex. Parallel to evidence of such egalitarian cultures in Crete and Catal Huyuk (in what is now Turkey), there is much to suggest active trading, but little to be found which suggests military weaponry or fortifications.
In a sweeping turn of events (over several millennia), early partnership societies may have been overrun and conquered by nomadic bands, whose own mode of social organization was based on the dominator model. “Raids grew into full-scale invasions…until, some four thousand years ago, the world historic defeat of partnership culture was complete.” Eisler stresses that a fundamental characteristic of the conquering civilization was that it “valued the destructive power of the blade:” “[The invaders} characteristically acquired wealth, not by developing technologies of production, but through ever more effective technologies of destruction.”
Robert Bly and Philip Slater have proposed a contrasting hypothesis for the origins of the authoritarian form of social organization, which emerged at this time.
Both have looked to the transitional period some 5-6 thousand years ago when gathering and hunting gave way to agriculture and the domestication of animals - a time when humanity, in a wide variety of locations across the globe, glimpsed the possibility of controlling and manipulating “nature.”
Bly provides this image: we began to realize that nature could be tamed…and soon, “the health of cities depended on training wheat or barley to grow in huge fields alone whether it wanted to or not.”
As the centuries progressed humanity witnessed the emergence of kings, nation-states, social classes, standing armies, and slavery. One can imagine the grand evolution of form of “civilization;” a decisive historic leap from the Neolithic tribal community to a centralized state organization, it manifested in the birth of “cities” capable of dominating and ordering a whole river valley. What was the purpose of these new forms of organization: fixed vertical hierarchies of status, and rigid systems of control, backed by coercive power? According to Slater, nothing less than the management of enslaved tribes who would not voluntarily participate in the society of their conquerors.
Slater argues that authoritarianism is a male creation, founded in war. Since women play such a small part in war, their position underwent a sharp decline. Soon they were at the “bottom” of society; as Slater notes, even the “lowest” male could be a dictator in his own home.
“Perhaps the males in some communities became intoxicated with the power potential of animal breeding… and took to a more bellicose life. Whatever the causes, authoritarianism began to appear as a dominant social form in many parts of the world 5 or 6,000 years ago - in the Far East, North Africa, India, and the Middle East - and has continued to be the prevailing "mega-culture" ever since, spreading to Europe, Africa, Meso-America and most of Asia.
We begin to find kings, social classes, slaves, standing armies, weaponry, torture, and human sacrifice. Gods are put over goddesses, wives begin to pay deference to husbands and sons to their fathers. …Authoritarianism may in fact be defined as a highly centralized social organization developed in order to exercise coercive control over unwilling participants in the community.”
Paradigms are like the water in which - we, as "fish" - swim - but ordinarily do not notice. When we remain unaware of these thought-contexts they tend to determine our behavior (they tend to "run" us) to a much greater degree than we realize.
Imagine a fish in a bowl who - somehow or other - could change its own water, say, when it has become dirty and toxic. What a difference this would make in their everyday lives!
***
Generally, the paradigms that run the show (and to a great degree our lives) remain unexamined. Unless of course we choose to "observe the observer" and the lens he or she is using.
Edgar Morin suggests that at the deepest level paradigms determine "the promotion/selection of master concepts of intelligibility." Functionally, such "master concepts" serve as the selecting principle concerning ideas to be integrated into both our theories about the world - and our daily discourse about the world. Without our realizing it, perfectly good ideas are refused, rejected and excluded, or at the very least subordinated - all according to the controlling paradigm we have unconsciously accepted.
"Paradigms also determine master logical operations. The paradigm, hidden beneath the logic, selects the logical operations that become preponderant and pertinent under its dominion (exclusion-inclusion, disjunction-conjunction, implication-negation).
"The paradigm grants privilege to certain logical operations to the detriment of others, such as disjunction to the detriment of conjunction; and grants validity and universality to its chosen logic. Thereby it gives the qualities of necessity and truth to the discourse and theory it controls. By prescription and proscription the paradigm founds the axiom and expresses itself for example, in the axiom 'every natural phenomenon obeys determinism,'or 'every properly human phenomenon is defined by opposition to nature.'
"Thus the paradigm selects and determines conceptualization and logical operations. It designates the fundamental categories of intelligibility and controls their use. Individuals know, think, and act according to interiorized culturally inscribed paradigms.
"For example, there are two opposite paradigms concerning the '-nature relation.' The first paradigm includes the human in nature; all discourse under its dominion makes man a natural being and recognizes 'human nature.' The second paradigm prescribes disjunction between these two terms, and determines man’s specificities by exclusion of the idea of nature.
"These two contrary paradigms share a common obedience to an even deeper paradigm, the paradigm of simplification which, in the face of any conceptual complexity, prescribes either reduction (here, of the human to the natural) or disjunction (here, between the human and the natural. Both of these paradigms preclude conception of the uniduality...
"The paradigm is both underground and sovereign in all theories, doctrines, and ideologies. The paradigm is unconscious but it irrigates and controls conscious thought, making it also Super-conscious, In short, the paradigm institutes primordial relations that form axioms, determine concepts, command discourse and/or theories. It organizes their organization and generates their generation or regeneration."
***
The “great Western paradigm,” formulated by Descartes and imposed by developments in European history since the 17th century very much involves disconnection. The Cartesian paradigm, for example, can be said to disconnect subject and object. And, this principle of dissociation can be applied right through or understanding of the universe: Body/Mind, Physical/Spiritual, Reason/Emotion, Freedom/Determinism, Existence/Essence, etc.
Still today, one of the primary paradigms running our world is that of "Domination/Subordination." It can also be referred to as the "Control Paradigm."
It gets played out in the now typical relationships such as "Man over Nature," - "over Women," and - "over other men." Clearly, within the typical hierarchical model of “dominator business organizations,” human beings are viewed essentially as resources to be exploited.
An increasing number of organizational consultants are finally saying that, in contemporary times this way of doing business is no longer sustainable.
Yet the truth is that systems thinking (and specifically thinking in terms of “partnership-systems”) is not only a necessity for long-term business survival, but potentially for human survival on Earth as well.
For Eisler the simple reality is this: Androcacy, which she proposes as an alternative to the more dated term “Patriarchy,” (and defines as a social system ruled through force or threat of force by men) cannot meet today’s central human tasks - the survival of our species and the development of our unique potentials.
She argues that it cannot meet this requirement precisely because of its “inbuilt emphasis on the technologies of destruction [and] its dependence on violence for social control.”
Regarding the struggle that needs to take place in Kansas (as well as virtually everywhere else!) I believe we will only benefit by striving to see both the "trees and the forest" as clearly as possible - and missing neither one.
Every skirmish, of course, needs to be fought (non-violently) on its own turf and terms.The renewed lust for oppressing women needs to be faced and defeated at every turn and in every situation it arises.
Yet, it seems to me that if we only pay attention to each battle we will lose sight of the invisible, but deep forces and thought-forms out of which each event emerges. Ignore the roots and the weeds return - time and again.
My sense is that, a major educational/PR (in the George Lakoff sense) initiative which clearly revealed the history and destructiveness of the authoritarian mindset could result in a major advancement of Progressive goals.
Eisler has said that the greatest obstacle to humanity’s survival is the “dominator” mode of social organization. Even in 2012 we can see that a "power-over" orientation still over-spreads the world.
My sense also is that - without an any way diminishing the significance of women's issues - these struggles would be further energized and empowered by linking them with the dominator paradigm, as well as with threats to the survival of life on Earth.
We need for to practice a kin of "radical openness" and flexibility re- our analysis of problems and solutions.
"To choose religious or ideological dogmatism in the name of freedom is as foolish as for a jailed man to exercise his right to remain in prison. "
"We may not all agree about abortion, but we can all agree that these decisions ought to be made by a woman and her family, not a politician."
In the civic realm, there is a mind-boggling number of the people's decisions made by politicians, that should be made by the people. You can train an animal to accept food from you, and it will come to return, over and over, to be fed. It's the same with elites, and their politicians. You give them power/control over your life, and they love it. They want more. This is how Merkans wound up enslaved to an imperial monster on permanent rampage.
So you want to make your own decisions regarding your reproductive life? The wild animal doesn't recognize your delicate preferences. It comes at you anyway. Demanding lunch. You taught it to take from you. So it takes EVERYTHING from you.
Go talk to the wildlife enthusiasts. They will tell you rule NUMBER ONE is consistency. If you want predictable behavior from the animal, then you must be consistent in your behavior.
Same with the elites and their politicians. Don't give them a snack today and expect them to stay away tomorrow. Don't give them power in the economic realm and expect them to stay out of the social realm. Give them nothing, and keep it all for yourself.
Be consistent. Consistency works great for the people, anyway, because it simplifies our philosophy, doctrine, agenda. Power/control by/for the people is good in all realms. So keep it for yourself, in all realms. Consistency makes things understandable, coherent, resonant with our inner truth. It's our natural tendency.
What's unnatural is the endlessly conflicted, confusing, inconsistent liberal/konservative indoctrination we were forced to undergo.
The big news of the day is the people are learning these lessons in droves. Because the elites are fearless now, and it's obvious we must stop feeding them power/control.
Global warming, worldwide economic meltdown & resource depletion and Republican legislatures give us deceptive medicine in Kansas, legislated rape in Texas & Virginia, and required seat belts for dogs in Tennessee.
So we've now rendered the Hippocratic oath quaint, alongside the Constitution and the Magna Carta. Soon state legislatures will be repealing the laws of physics.
I think we should level the playing field by having all men who admit to intercourse with abortion seeking women have a rectal probe inserted along with the females seeking abortions in "rape states" like Kansas, Arizona and so on. I also think that the churches should be taxed for doing any business other than praying and that these taxes should pay for the male probes and lifetime welfare for women who "shame change" their minds.
As far as doctors potentially being legally exempt from relaying bad news, it legitimizes the wrong ethics and doctors have an ethical duty to patients, the laws notwithstanding, to deliver the service of diagnostic information for which they are trained, obligated professionally to adhere to, reimbursed for and for which the society in which I wish to live in honors. I can't think of a better way to make human death, and misery public policy than to hang the doctors who care for women out to go down conflicted and blamed. Societal policy and beliefs determine the amount of human misery which is allowed. I am not proud of where we are going as a hypocritical, scapegoating,culture. The fundamentalists are misinformed, indoctrinated, dummed down, and manipulated by the those with power and money. We are already paying for the loss of civility which keeps us from looking out for our own interests as a near poverty serf society. And then the misery is blamed on "the liberals". Forest Gump said it succinctly, "Stupid is as stupid does".
I think that any severely compromised fetus should at the very least have a full trust for lifetime care and support up front by the groups insisting that each conception is legally required to be born.
Exactly clearbluesky! I see there are many of us in agreement on here addressing this very issue. If a woman knows the risk and choses to continue that pregnancy, that is her CHOICE, but if she is denied that choice because a doctor didn't disclose the necessary information and is forced to bear a child she might not otherwise choose to have for various reasons, then those supporters of anti-choice should they themselves be held responsible for that childs care and support throughout life. The anti-choice cries would be but a whimper if they were mandated to care for the unwanted fetuses THEY want to be born!!!
Doctors who behave so unprofessionally as this Bill condones have no right to practise medicine. Legislators who introduce or support such Bills or endorse them with votes should be hounded from office. Both groups should be kicked into the gutter where they belong!
We must demand the right to control our own bodies in our own interests (not the interests of men, our families or anyone’s invisible friends). In order to control our own bodies, we must have absolute and unrestricted *knowledge* about our bodies.
Let me repeat what I have said many times here. We must start talking in terms
of our rights – our right to freedom of choice and bodily autonomy, our right to say yes or no and have our decisions respected, our right to bear children *and* our right not be turned into incubators. We must not stop until we are recognized as full human beings, socially and economically as well as juridically.
And we should not cower when these animals tell us that our abortions are a ‘lifestyle choice.’ Yes, it is our choice as to what grows in our bodies, not our parents’, our siblings’ our children’s or our spouses’ – or any of their invisible friends’ either!
Women’s health (including rational sex-education and proper contraceptive advice) must become part of a free comprehensive system of healthcare for all. Abortion at the behest of the woman and performed under the strictest conditions of medical hygiene, must be made legal at any stage in pregnancy and laws giving the foetus human rights must be abolished.
We must accept nothing less.
The Colosseum situated in Rome is basically an amphitheater. It was built as an upgrading of the Circus Maximus where wild beast fights, mock naval battles and gladiatorial combats used to take place. Oval in form, the circus structure had a permanent central divider right.OB GYN Atlanta GA
What is the bill number and what section does your article refer to?
House Bill 2598
Thanks SiouxRose for what I believe is your first direct reply to any of my postings over the years. I have been avoiding posting direct replies to you, probably because I wish to avoid a confrontation between my "empirical" world-view and your evidently more spiritual one, although I have my doubts about whichn is ultimately more spiritual.
(I drove out west in southern Indiana this evening to a brilliant red/blue sunset that actually sent a sort of radial corona of electrons streaming east. The changes to the planet are visible if you look for them. The "intellectual" is by no means the necessary opposite of the Practical. Quite the contrary. I did not reply earlier because I have been repairing my front porch roof, which involves the Zen of Carpentry.)
You wrote: "What is more poisonous to the open mind than a faith-based presumption that you already know all that needs to be known, and are thus in a position to impose it onto others."
In actually doing home-repair Carpentry, I quickly become aware of my intellectual deficits. Thus, for small example, I have literally thousands of screws of many different sizes and types, and over the years have tried to organize them in bottles. But then I forget which bottle holds which screws, and where the bottles are. And then I allow myself to float and remember. It takes Praxis, and Remembrance. Meanwhile, many days ago I lost a small crowbar that I needed, to dislodge a wrought-iron structure from a tree that had actually absorbed it [seriously!], but after spending days seeking that small crowbar, I haven't found it: misplaced or stolen: the question is important!
My view of what I know is not faith-based. Archimedes said, Give me a lever big enough and I can move the planets. Give me a half-inch wrench and I can prevent my roof from caving in!
I say, give me a little soil and I can grow a garden. We all need sustenance.
I saw a honeybee yesterday. The daffodils are in full bloom, while the crocuses have died off. The most persistent local parasite is the Virginia Creeper; it seeks total control. It is a most virulent weed that smells invigorating around Election Time, but smothers its host. It prefers heights on other plants, but can exist as a ground plant waiting for opportunity.
Perhaps what is needed is a Pedagogy of Nature instead of a Pedagogy of Semantics. Yeah, a stretch...
Be well.
-30-
Bless you. OleManRiver,
You certainty sound as if you are in the moment and fully involved in your connection with work, Nature. This is Zen. (Speaking of your practicing the Zen of Carpentry)!
And Zen masters are the earthiest of human beings...
Re- your suggestion of a split between an "empirical" world-view and a "more spiritual one," I believe it's a false dichotomy (or "a distinction without a difference").
May not be your cuppa tea to do so, but if you search for the phrase, "Form is none other than emptiness. Emptiness is none other than form" .........it will most likely sound like absolute gobble-d-gook - and meaningless drivel to boot. ("Hey I'm just fixin' my porch and appreciatin' the scenery. If that's profound, it's way too deep for a down-to-earth guy like me!").
Yet the truth remains the truth: this succinct realization (which is at the core of Zen and many other forms of Buddhism) when understood deeply - reveals the secret of Non-duality...so to speak...of "The Oneness of the Universe." In one moment the "man/nature" fracture is healed. In truth the division was illusory to begin with. And so it is with every possible duality and pair of opposites: "behind the Two lies the One."
If and when we learn to reside in this awareness we will know (in our very bones) that our universal existence and practical here-and-now-ness are "not-two" --- and yet, strangely enough, remain distinct and workable.
But, tell the truth now: you knew that already, didn't you? :-)
This year has certainly made it clear that elections have consequences. I thought these "boys" told us they were going to fix the economy and put everyone back to work. At the federal level we have had six or seven bills banning funding for abortion, something that has been illegal for decades.
There have been something like a 1000 anti women bills introduced around the country over the last couple of years.
When did the repugs decide they wanted to regulate everyone's private life. I thought they hated lawyers but here we have another bill that will end up in court for years and cost the tax payers millions to defend.
I see these bills mostly in very red states and cannot help feeling that these folks got what they voted for ( I know, not very nice of me). The problem with that thinking is the next generation does not deserve this blatant abuse of their rights nor the precedents that will be set for generations to come.
Religious views of some should never be imposed on others. Get politicians out of our bedrooms, out of our bodies, out of our private lives.