Synopsis

I have been really busy lately and overwhelmed with various issues in my real, meat world life.

So, although I don’t have the emotional energy or time to write a full post, I just wanted to say a few things.

Stupak-Pitts Amendment? Makes me furious.

Obama administration’s and other progressive groups’ responses? Disappointed and furious, but not surprised.

What do I think of the chances of the health care (method of payment and abortion) reform bill passing in the Senate? Well, considering the Senate is less liberal than the House, we have “friends” like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, and a pro-life Catholic majority leader in Harry Reid, I am not optimistic.

Oh, by the way, I highly recommend this book: The Healing of America, by T.R. Reid.

Reply turned post, conscience clauses can be OK style

I am starting to grow weary of being the contrary voice. I duck out of many confrontations, believe it or not. But, sometimes I still speak up.

More than once, a liberal, pro-choice site has taken a stance against conscience clauses in general. Although I am a pretty vocal pro-choice commenter in the interwebs, I find myself defending conscience clauses in these conversations.

This time, I replied on a Feminists for Choice post asking if conscience clauses were ethical:

I am a medical student and a member of Medical Students for Choice.

I strongly believe in conscience clauses and plan on refusing to perform certain procedures and to dispense certain medications when I am a physician. I think every physician follows her conscience, and am afraid anti-choice activists are using this important part of medical ethics to refuse to provide services that are in the best interest of the patient.

I plan on refusing to perform unnecessary procedures that are requested all the time as an ob/gyn. I will not perform any genital mutilation, male or female. This includes any routine newborn male circumcision, or elective vaginoplasties. This of course does not extend to any medically indicated procedures, which would be in the patient’s best interest.

I will refuse to do labor inductions because a mother is sick of being pregnant or because I am going on vacation. I will refuse to do non medically indicated cesarean section because a mother is afraid of the birth process or wants to have her baby on a certain date, or because I want to get home in time to have dinner with my family on a day I am being paid to be on call.

I think practitioners that are truly ethical do not use conscience clauses as an excuse to deny medical treatments to their patients or clients because of some idea that premarital sex is immoral. It is easy to find work in an area that does not involve refusing to provide necessary medical care. Most of these people who are refusing reproductive health care want to make an issue out of their refusal to control women’s sexual autonomy, not to support their own ethics, and it’s a shame.

There are two students in my medical school class who have stated they will refuse to prescribe birth control. Both identify as Catholic. One was more than happy to take handfuls of condoms our club was passing out for when he has sex with strippers (I wish I was kidding). He said he is using them for disease prevention, not birth control, so he is not a hypocrite.

I hope he goes into radiology, or urology.

The other is a Jesuit priest. He is planning on going into psychiatry, so most likely won’t be in a position to be a birth control prescriber often. He is also honest and out in regards to his homosexuality, and is an activist to change the Catholic position on homosexuality. So, he thinks some rules are meant to be changed.

The point of these two stories is to say, ethics mean different things to different people. Physicians and other health care practitioners are too diverse a group to force into one group of practices. However, we can encourage responsible application of conscience clauses and try to make sure essential health care does not get refused in the process.

My day yesterday

Now that I am done with my 12 hour day at school today, I can actually sit back and write about yesterday.

This is a political post. So, if you’re just here for the birth stuff, you are forewarned.

But, considering all the stuff I have posted about race recently, if you are still sticking around, you must be OK with my ranty side.

Yesterday was a fantastic yet very confrontational day. I can feel a little adrenaline release just thinking about it.

First of all, we had a very successful Medical Students for Choice meeting. I billed it as a “Common Ground” event. We had a wonderful speaker, Rev. Dorothy Chaney, a Baptist preacher and a member of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice. I met her at a meeting of the Planned Parenthood Interfaith Council. I was so moved about her story about when her aunt almost died from an illegal abortion. She prayed, and told God that if she survived, she would dedicate her life to making sure this didn’t happen to other women.

Well, now she is a preacher who provides counsel at a local abortion clinic, and supports sex education and outreach through her church in a predominantly black and impoverished community in Miami, one that has a high teen pregnancy rate. She also was part of the Institute on Religion and Democracy at Howard University.

Rev. Chaney did a wonderful job. We only gave one day’s notice for the event. We had standing room only. Many people showed up who were not members of Medical Students for Choice, including a few medical students with bibles. Don’t get me wrong, there are members of Medical Students for Choice, at our chapter and that I have met at the national conventions, that take their religious faith very seriously. But, these particular students with bibles were not there to be members.

A few highlights from what I thought was a very successful event. At one point, after she was done speaking, one of the attendees asked her something about “killing babies” and she corrected him and said “Honey, they’re not babies yet. They’re fetuses.” (Which, technically, they’re not, since we were discussing first trimester abortion, which is still the embryonic stage, but anyway….) The medical student said “No, they’re not, they’re BABIES!”

I wanted to freeze frame them and say, “Hold on, which one is the preacher and which one is the medical student?”

At the end of the event, a first year student held up her bible and said “I have something to say..” and Rev. Chaney said “I have the same bible as you!” brightly. The first year student continued “I want you all to to read the bible for yourself and decide what it says.” And I smiled broadly and said “Thanks so SO much. That was exactly the point of our event to find common ground. Thanks for attending and participating so respectfully!”

So, if that wasn’t enough, there was a health care rally at Senator Bill Nelson’s office. I went, and so did the other research fellow. It was…interesting. There were more pro health care reform people than antis, but not by too much.

OK, I’m pretty biased, but the signs and arguments on the anti side were pathetic. Many referred to killing seniors. I can’t believe anyone would hold a sign with the thoroughly debunked death panels lie on it. I find it really offensive, to tell you the truth. A woman with one asked me if I ever heard of the Heritage Foundation. I said “My father worked at the Heritage Foundation. And he had a living will.” End of life counseling is not euthanasia.

There were also a lot of references to the Constitution (these people who love their federally subsidized flood insurance think that the Constitution outlaws federal spending on anything not spelled out in the original document?) and socialism (and many admitted they loved their Medicare. Except for the guy with the socialism sign who said he had no insurance and took his children to the department of health. Seriously).

Some highlights:

The other fellow is doing research on end of life. She had a bunch of surveys with her, and was asking people to fill them out. It is a research study for the medical school. She is collecting opinions and knowledge about hospice and living wills. It is an IRB approved survey, not biased or politically slanted. One older gentleman with a sign saying “Kill the bill, not our seniors” refused to fill one out.

So, you’ll demonstrate with a sign about end of life counseling and options, but you won’t fill out an opinion survey about it? I guess he has his own way of getting his opinion heard.

Oh, and I got called a “racist bigot”. This is seriously how the conversation went:

Him: “I don’t want to pay more taxes. I like my insurance.”
Me: “Well, that’s where we don’t see eye to eye. I care about the general public good, and you care about yourself.”
Him: “That makes you a racist bigot! You think you are more important than everyone else!”

Yeah, and liberals are playing the so called racism card? I recently got called a Holocaust denier by a friend of my brother’s because I said it was OK (and precedented) for the president to address schoolchildren. What is wrong with these people? If lies about killing the elderly and full term babies (oh, yes, they were yelling about infanticide, too) don’t work, then start calling people the worst random insults that spring to mind, even if they are completely unrelated to the conversation.

And, I’ll end this with some photos of misspelled signs! This one said “KILL THE HEALTH CARE BILL, NOT GRANMA” but his arms got tired before I could take a picture of it in its full glory.

And, here’s the woman in the garbage bag with the sign about who works for us. It was raining about an hour before I took this picture. I guess she was afraid the rain might come back, and maybe her clothes were dry clean only. She drove off in a gorgeous new convertible Mercedes. You’d think she’d have a nice raincoat. Or maybe a dictionary. I am sure she earned that Mercedes by merit, intelligence and hard work. Wouldn’t want any giveaways.

Personhood bill in Florida

The radical anti-choice lobby has brought a so-called “Personhood” Bill to Florida. This would try to extend human rights to conceptus “at the beginning of biological development”.

If the physiology of pregnancy (like, there is no biological test for conception, and the vast majority of fertilized eggs do not implant, and no major medical organization defines that as the beginning of life) and the major ethical concerns with this don’t already sway you to sign this petition against the Personhood amendment in Florida, maybe this will:

Comment policy

I don’t have an official policy. I obviously don’t routinely censor anyone who disagrees with me. I am all for constructive conversation.

I do have my comments set that any new commenter has to be cleared by me, and I get notified of every comment. So, just a tip to anyone who wants to post comments calling Med Students for Choice “fucking liars”, that killing an abortion provider is somehow defensible as a “choice” with equal footing as termination of early pregnancy or anything else along those lines, it’s not going to get through. I will use such comments as proof that so called anti-choice activists are unreasonable fringe elements that defend murderers, however, and are not pro-life. So, thanks for the fodder.

I also don’t allow anonymous posting, so I will have your email address. Not that I would want to communicate with someone with that point of view on purpose, I’m just saying, spewing hate with a trail is kind of….stupid. Especially if it’s a work address or you are affiliated with a university.

If you are of the anti-choice persuasion and for some reason enjoy reading my blog, however, please feel free to check out my blog for choice day post from this January and see if you are believing any of these myths and letting them guide your comment attempts.

I have wanted to do a post on common ground for a while, and I may have time to do it soon. I am totally cool with people wanting to support women with unplanned pregnancies and who want to help them keep their pregnancies and raise happy, healthy children. Hell, I carried two unplanned pregnancies to term. Obviously I support that option. However, hateful rhetoric is not welcome here. Exercise your freedom of speech on another site where such filth is welcome. Thanks!

I write letters, activist style

A double hat tip to Shakesville, one tip for the title and another for the story.

CNN has a headline referring to Scott Roeder, the confessed assassin of Dr. Tiller, as an “anti-abortion activist.”

Here is my letter:

I was shocked to see Dr. Tiller’s assassin referred to as an “abortion activist” by your website (http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/28/kansas.doctor.killed/index.html ) in a headline.

I am an abortion activist as a member of Medical Students for Choice. This man was many things: an assassin, a murderer, a terrorist, or simply “accused murderer” would have been accurate. He was not an activist.

Many people have complained that the popular media has normalized violent targeting of reproductive health care workers, and have theorized that this euphemization may embolden such “activists”. Please keep this in mind when covering this issue.

Signed,

A future provider of a legal, safe, necessary, common medical procedure who is sick of being maligned while violent nuts on the fringe’s feelings are coddled by the “most trusted name in journalism”.

Here is CNN’s Feedback form if you are so inclined.

Reply turned post, why not one more Tiller one style

Here is the original post talking about, you guessed it, late term abortion. You don’t necessarily have to read it, because many of the commenters didn’t read it. Ironic, because the post is all about how people don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to late term abortions. I saw yet another person say that their own, healthy, not very preterm babies (twins in her case) makes her against all late term abortions, and then she talked about a 23 week old baby that somehow survived somewhere.

My reply:

You are completely misrepresenting the chances of a 23 weeker to survive. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) does not even recommend attempting resuscitation before 24 weeks.

Here is an entire scientific article that is a position statement on the debilitating health effects on the measly few who survive. This is from the AAP, the organization that is responsible for infant and child health in the entire country.

The resuscitative techniques and medical treatments can be torture, especially on a newborn who is only receiving futile treatment because its chances of surviving are miniscule, and its chances of being functional are even smaller.

The few women who get 32 week procedures do not get them just because their babies would be premature. Here are their stories. I don’t see why people can’t realize that this has NOTHING to do with their healthy premature babies. And, anyone can still choose to carry any pregnancy to term if they so desire, even if a 10 year old who was raped can still get an abortion, or a women with a fetus with anencephaly.

If you are uncomfortable with that choice, please exercise the freedom to not choose it. I would be uncomfortable with carrying a fetus that would never survive for 20 weeks while having to talk to every nosy stranger about my deformed, dashed hopes, and at the same time face greater health risks, because someone with healthy twins is uncomfortable about a medical procedure while commenting on a message board. If you don’t mind, I will ask physicians what they think about this instead.

Trying to get stuff done, and a reply turned post

I am trying to keep trucking with a semblance of normalcy. My entire house is either upside down, blocked by dehumidifiers, or packed into boxes. When they started packing my measuring cups, I almost cried. Don’t the workers know that I procrastinate by baking??

Anyway, I have had to be content with procrastinating by reading about the Tiller assassination on the web. Again, there are way too many great posts to link to. My blog roll has great links to many sites with great coverage.

I have tried to avoid the really bad sites, but I stumbled upon one that had a fairly ugly comment section. I guess I should have expected it, since the original post tries to link Tiller and Jeffrey Dahmer. I sort of feel bad even linking to posts and comments that encourage dehuminization of the few, unfortunate women who are put in the position of needing these procedures and the practitioners brave enough to help them. But, I figure, if you are reading at my site and would agree with the posters on that site, I’d rather you click and go there than stay here.

I posted two replies. Here is my second reply.

Tiller wasn’t a murderer, the man who assassinated him was a murderer. Language like this in this comment section emboldens assassins. Assassins who kill health care practitioners performing legal, compassionate procedures.

There are only 100 post viability abortions per year in the United States (less than 1% of all abortions), and these are done on fetuses that are not compatible with life (and, by definition, not yet alive, medically) or desperately sick, or done on rape victims who are 9 or 10 years old.

Anyone who ignores this and pretends Tiller was someone in the wrong is supporting terrorism. There is a reason why there is a new National Task Force on Violence Against Reproductive Health Workers. There is a reason why federal marshalls have been sent out to clinics. Because of proud, angry zealots like the ones on this thread.

There are plenty of ways to reduce all abortion. Support birth control access and affordability. Support comprehensive sex education. Support health care for women and their children. Support better maternity leave and public support of poor families.

Get to work, baby lovers. I’m waiting. You will affect a helluva lot more than 100 probably severely damaged or dead fetuses that way.

There isn’t much we can do to decrease late term abortions except prevent the rape of young girls and improve earlier detection of severe defects. Ranting about compassionate doctors being murderers online doesn’t. It just gives people who want to control women’s bodies (the chance to) feel power in front of their computer screen.

Go volunteer in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) sometime if you want to see some horrifying procedures. Physicians don’t throw fetuses in the trash. Tiller developed techniques specifically to help these women mourn and hold their sick, wanted fetuses after he compassionately ended the pregnancy. And all the reactionary commenters on here want to do is spit in their face and call them murderers.

I am almost happy that the silver lining of this brutal assassination is that the general public, who is horrified by this, sees the anti choice crowd for the raving, heartless bunch they are.

Reply turned post, Dr. Tiller style

I’m sorry, I tried. I have been studying. I swear. But I have been keeping up with the coverage of the Dr. Tiller slaying, and I read a two great posts at Hugo Schwyzer’s blog. (There are lots of great posts up about this, too numerous to count or link to. Just click on my blog roll and you’ll find tons. There are lots of awful things, too, too many to ignore.)

He has been doing a great job speaking, as have most of his commenters. But, I am so sick of people harping about late term abortions. Usually they come up regardless of what aspect of abortion is being discussed. Dr. Tiller was a practitioner who was targeted because he would perform them.

One of the commenters, Matt, said that the “late term murders [Dr. Tiller] did were absolutely horrifying”.

I replied

@Matt,

the delivery and short, painful, futile life of a baby born with severe abnormalities is also horrifying. Walking around with a burgeoning belly that every stranger wants to touch and then ask you about when all you can answer is “My baby is dead. I haven’t gone into labor. I might turn septic” is horrifying.

I am sure most people don’t want to be the practitioner who pulls a dead, infected fetus from a woman’s womb when all she wanted was a healthy child. How dare you insult the man who was strong enough to be there for these women. What would you have them do? Rot and die while you close your eyes and say “icky!”?

I am going to be a physician. I will be doing and witnessing many procedures that you may not be strong enough to handle. Some are very ethically challenging. I’d love to hear your opinions on some of these that do not involve a women’s reproductive rights.

Should we force feed the child of an illegal immigrant who has cancer and can’t eat? Should we pay for her chemo if she is the child of an indigent migrant worker? What if the mother is against chemo, and the child will die without it? Should we spend the money fighting this in the courts, pay for her chemo, force her to take it, and then force feed her when she can’t eat? You want to put the tube up her nose and down her throat if her mother has told her to fight you? You want to fight for the tax dollars to pay for her therapy? Is the president gonna hop on a plane to save her life?

Anyway, I digress.

It is hard enough going through the physical and emotional challenges of late pregnancy, delivery, birth, and the post partum period for an average mother. Women who have desired pregnancies with poor outcomes are the last group that deserved to be kicked around. They should not have to walk through lines of picket signs and people screaming at them that they will be going to hell.

Neither should ten year old rape victims. That was another one of the cases that was brought to court. Of course she had a late term abortion. SHE WAS TEN!! She wasn’t on birth control. She couldn’t drive herself to the doctor. She didn’t know what being pregnant was. She had no advocacy. She was being raped.

People who use the issue of abortion as an opportunity to talk about late term abortions are using these poor women as punching bags and I am sick of it. People who villainize the practitioners who are willing to perform these operations when they are obviously risking their own lives to do it are pathetic. And people who shoot them in cold blood are heinous.

Ugh, what horrible news

After many attempts over decades, Dr. Tiller was murdered today in the lobby of his church. Dr. Tiller performed abortions as part of providing comprehensive reproductive care in Wichita. He was known for being one of the few providers who would perform second trimester abortions in his area.

What a shame. What a cowardly, hypocritical crime against humanity. Anyone who passionately wanted to reduce abortion in Knasas could have promoted comprehensive sex education and access to affordable birth control.