Yeah but I can’t blame the doctors for refusing, when in doubt a right wing jury without medical training will decide if it was an emergency or not, and your freedom depends on their verdict.
But that is the explicit threat. That is what law makers are saying they are setting as precedent.
Doctors swear an oath, “first, do no harm.” So yes we can blame the doctors!
Doctors are supposed to behave ethically regardless of the law. This is not a new thing! Doctors providing appropriate treatment despite the law is a very fucking long tradition in medicine.
Doctors providing appropriate treatment despite the law is a very fucking long tradition in medicine.
It isn’t. Name one time that happened.
“Do no harm” doesn’t mean “risk your livelihood and freedom to perform an operation that a patient can get elsewhere”.
It’s not even close to the same. Abortion laws shouldn’t exist in the first place. The decision should be left up to the woman alone. All this law is doing is making providers worry about the consequences of performing one. A law against theft deters theft… There is a purpose to that.
From your link:
“At the time of the discussion, Farmer was medically stable, with some vaginal bleeding that was not heavy. “Therefore contrary to the most appropriate management based (sic) my medical opinion, due to the legal language of MO law, we are unable to offer induction of labor at this time,” the report quotes the specialist as saying.”
So yes, the law did prevent an abortion and endangered her life.
She is suing because she expected an exception for herself.
It could be very easily argued that “could deteriorate rapidly” is not a medical emergency, and therefore does not meet the requirements of the MO or federal laws to allow for inducing labor or abortion.
Given the overzealous rhetoric from state officials, I understand the hospital and doctor’s reluctance to provide care. We are fucking ourselves.
This is not a medical error. EMTALA is not a protective law for healthcare facilities or professionals. The state can still prosecute based on their own laws, and in Texas, for example, performing an abortion can come with a lifetime sentence.
From the medical provider and hospitals standpoint, you are now stuck between a rock and a hard place. Perform an abortion and face criminal charges from the state or refrain and face civil charges from the fed.
If you had the choice to face a criminal charge (prison sentence) or a civil charge (fine), which would you pick?
Texas law imposes severe criminal penalties for performing abortions. Medical professionals who perform abortions face first-degree felony charges punishable by five years to life in prison if the procedure results in fetal death. Attempting or inducing an abortion is a second-degree felony, carrying two to 20 years imprisonment. Additionally, providers face minimum civil penalties of $100,000 per violation and mandatory revocation of their medical license.
Doctors told her she would be unlikely to carry the child to term, and doing so increased her chances of infection or other severe outcome.
When the law is a witch hunt not based on science, doctors cannot operate based on their best judgement based on science. Real issues of “unlikely” and “increased her chances” aren’t the same things as immediate medical emergency: they prevent an immediate medical emergency. Any law restricting abortions to when they are “medically necessary” will always lead to cases where its denied until its immediately medically necessary, at which point it may be too late. This is a clear-cut example of what such laws will always do and doctors being forced to tiptoe around the feelings of fanatics instead of being able to practice medicine.
Hospitals lawyers “we’d rather be maybe sued by the state than definitely sued and shut down”
Is how this plays out in real life.
federal EMTALA requirements have not changed, and continue to require that healthcare professionals offer treatment, including abortion care, that the provider reasonably determines is necessary to stabilize the patient’s emergency medical condition
At the time of the discussion, Farmer was medically stable, with some vaginal bleeding that was not heavy.
Sounds like she was not experiencing an emergency medical condition that would have required stabilization. It could have become more severe, which explains why conventional care would have been abortion, but it was not, at the moment of presentation.
Sure would be nice if they would just let the physicians practice medicine, without having to second guess which law takes precedence.
What defines a medical emergency in rhe eyes of the law? How many hospitals are going to perform an abortion they deem a medical emergency only to be potentially sued by an AG who disagrees that it was medically necessary?
What hospital is going to test the boundaries of what immediate or imminent risk to life in the eyes of the law? Especially with any government official salivating at the chance to punish any abortion care.
“At risk” isn’t an emergency. All pregnancies have risk to the life of the mother.
An abortion was proactive healthcare. The law prevents it.
So did she lose her uterus? That would be great actually.
I don’t wish harm to people even if they didn’t understand what would happen when they encounter the same situation. This is just callous.
They understand it perfectly well. They think it won’t happen to them but they’re fine with it happening to others.
We may well be talking about someone who received inadequate sexual/reproductive education. Typically the only sex-ed the pulpit provides is “pro-life” propaganda.
ETA: I’ll take the downvotes on this one. Shower your disapproval. Fuck this lady and her leopard eaten face.
I don’t really feel happy for anybody in this case. Everybody loses. We can only hope that this person learned their lesson.
Absolutely agreed - her situation is a shit one, and I hope she learned her lesson. She chose her journey, though, in the face of all the contrary evidence.
I did a little digging and she is pro choice now
https://jezebel.com/former-pro-life-missouri-woman-denied-emergency-abortio-1849688390
This may get downdooted to oblivion, but I think some of this is human nature. It is abhorrent, and something we need to strive to fix, but it is rather natural for people to think that their own situation is typical – because for them, it is. Every exemplar that a privileged person will have is also a privileged exemplar – until, of course, something like this happens.
And as a further consequence, it is extremely difficult to convince someone that their personal situation is not the norm. Everyone wants to be the main character and ultimately believes that they are.
Not sure what the solution is.
Provide testing for logic, critical thinking, and empathy in order to vote?
Stop making excuses for stupid people that hold back the progress of mankind?
Oh, I’m not trying to make excuses. Though I can appreciate that it looks like that.
But how do we restrict the stupid people? If we agree that every human gets to take part, then it follows that the stupid will be voting.
I don’t think a litmus test is the answer, since they are extremely easy to misuse. Why not say only landowners should vote? How about only veterans? It’s a dangerous path.
It’s a dangerous path, but does that mean we shouldn’t consider it? Like when you vote you have to correctly identify your candidate’s policies. Or you have to answer some moral question like “rich people are rich because they are in some way inherently better”. Or if you vote anti choice you’re informed “selecting this candidate waives all natal care that may end your fetus’ life including termination of an unviable fetus to save your life, sign your name if you waive your medical rights” if they refuse to sign - your vote don’t count. But a lot of folks are too dumb to get a say in this shit right now. I think the dumbing down of America is 100% orchestrated and intentional, but we need to fix our dumbness for a few generations and get a good level set of “not being a fucking dipshit” before we can trust the random person on the street has more common sense than a bag of mismatched socks.
Why put it all on the stupid people? It’s at least as much a problem with people not being accountable for their words, the death of objective and traditional media, the loss of distinction between news and opinion.
The problem with Trump being elected is not just the stupid people who thought that was a good idea but the things he can get away with saying, lack of trusted reporting or fact checking.
I get your point, but i think people are not consistent with this. Who gets or doesnt get sympathy is entirely emotional.
Ive had people say that refugees are at fault for not getting their papers in order in time and shut be deportet over it and then go on to talk about how for them as citizens it is impossible with the low staffed and inefficient government offices these days.
They willfully ignore that their problems with the bureaucracy could exist for other people too. And we are not even talking about acknowledgong it to be worse. Just simply transferring their life experience onto other people like you describe.
Just for your info: There is no “downdooted to oblivion” on Lemmy. Up- and downvotes for comments have almost no effect.
Yes thanks, and I know that. I’m not going for updoots, but I do like to see them.
This is an explanation of human perception and behaviour, there is nothing controversial about it and easily understood. It is also true that if you stick someone in a creepy haunted house they will naturally feel scared even though it’s Halloween and it’s perfectly safe. The issue is not that humans have these natural tendencies that lead to logical fallacies, the issue is that humans have the capacity to be meta aware of them, process them, and situate them appropriately–skills developed through education and practice/experience–yet we have sociopolitocal movements that encourage the opposite for the benefit of the rich and powerful.
I don’t think it’s more human mature than the opposite is.
Most of us are capable of reasoning and of empathy. We can hear a doctor say “there’s cases where it’s necessary” and think “yeah, makes sense” or “I trust their expertise”.
Not being able to see past oneself seems like a very limited view. There’s reasons for that of course. but it’s a failure of education and social surroundings. And it’s not inherent.
Reading.
We need everyone to read more books. A wide variety of stories on a wide variety of topics by a wide variety of authors, all with different backgrounds and ideas. We must read stories that let us temporarily step into the mind and experiences of other people, who aren’t us, to train our brains the ability to understand the plights of others. Books of human stories, as opposed to movies, doom-scrolling TikTok, etc., seems uniquely suited for this kind of training of empathy, because the stories are executed inside our own brains.
I’m willing to bet that these why-are-the-leopards-suddenly-eating-my-face? the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion type people have read distinctly less, or at least far less varied, stories than us who look at them and wonder how it is possible to be so unable to put themselves in the shoes of anyone but themselves.
Hahahahahahahahahahah
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