This isn’t “Pro-Life”
The consequences of the post-Roe world.
Via ProPublica: A Texas Woman Died After the Hospital Said It Would be a “Crime” to Intervene in Her Miscarriage.
The fetus was on the verge of coming out, its head pressed against her dilated cervix; she was 17 weeks pregnant and a miscarriage was “in progress,” doctors noted in hospital records. At that point, they should have offered to speed up the delivery or empty her uterus to stave off a deadly infection, more than a dozen medical experts told ProPublica.
But when Barnica’s husband rushed to her side from his job on a construction site, she relayed what she said the medical team had told her: “They had to wait until there was no heartbeat,” he told ProPublica in Spanish. “It would be a crime to give her an abortion.”
For 40 hours, the anguished 28-year-old mother prayed for doctors to help her get home to her daughter; all the while, her uterus remained exposed to bacteria.
Three days after she delivered, Barnica died of an infection.
You can call this outcome a whole lot of thing, including gut-wrenching, sad, and infuriating, but you can’t call it “pro-life.”
Barnica is one of at least two Texas women who ProPublica found lost their lives after doctors delayed treating miscarriages, which fall into a gray area under the state’s strict abortion laws that prohibit doctors from ending the heartbeat of a fetus.
As a husband and a father and, really, simply as a human being, I cannot imagine the pain of thinking you are about to have a new child, having to then go through a miscarriage only to have the law block the ability of doctors to save your wife from dying.
It is just unacceptably awful. And yet, here we are.
Last month, ProPublica told the stories of two Georgia women, Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, whose deaths were deemed “preventable” by the state’s maternal mortality review committee after they were unable to access legal abortions and timely medical care amid an abortion ban.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp called the reporting “fear mongering.” Former President Donald Trump has not weighed in — except to joke that his Fox News town hall on women’s issues would get “better ratings” than a press call where Thurman’s family spoke about their pain.
Let me underscore and note the link to the story of Trump, in fact, making a joke about his ratings versus those of a family press conference about their loss and the consequences of the law he helped come into being.
I grew up in Evangelical circles wherein abortion is seen to be a simple issue. But, clearly, it is not. Women’s health and well-being are on the line and we need to understand that fact.
One cruel fact is that even if one thinks that it is paramount to get rid of abortion and therefore all of this suffering is just necessary collateral damage, the evidence suggests that getting rid of Roe hasn’t actually led to fewer abortions. Via the AP: US abortion numbers have risen slightly since Roe was overturned, study finds.
Remember, the cruelty is the point.
Once again, Orwell put it best:
O’Brien: How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?
Winston: By making him suffer.
O’Brien: Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but MORE merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred.
(emphasis added)
Oh gosh. That guy, Brian Kemp, who complained about “fear mongering”. What else has he done anyway?
That’s right, here’s what he said when he signed a bill to outlaw gender-affirming care in the state of Georgia:
Yeah, and I want to safeguard the bright, promising future of my kid — you just stopped me from doing it in the State of Georgia.
Don’t talk to me about “fear mongering”.
Every member of those “medical teams” in Texas and Georgia should be charged with murder, and Kemp and Abbott can be charged as accessories.
@Not the IT Dept.: I get the anger, the disgust, at the medical team. I feel that too. And I know that it likely isn’t that simple. Doing something that you are told is illegal and will mean losing your profession takes a huge amount of guts. It’s a massive risk. Providing the care in this case isn’t even something one person could easily do on their own. That means you have to create a conspiracy. Massively risky and might not even succeed in helping the woman if someone doesn’t go along. For example: if the solution is surgical you would need, at a minimum: the OBGYN, anesthesiologist, floor nurse, OR nurse, preop nurse, OR charge nurse, and OR tech. If you had all those you could at least accomplish the surgery, but you would 100% get caught unless you also had: the PACU nurse, everyone else in the OR who can see the schedule, the other shifts of floor nurses, the pharmacists, the pathologists and their techs, and the coders. I’m sure there are others. Going to surgery is not a simple process. So what about pharmacological interventions? For that you’d only need the floor nurse and the pharmacist and pharmacy tech to get the job done (although at 17 weeks this would also not be simple), but there would still be all kinds of other people who would be aware of what happened. You would get caught, and you would never be able to help another patient.
Ok, but what about the ethics of the situation? These health care workers should refuse to work in a system that asks them to let a woman die like this. Yes, I agree with that. Mostly. I have turned down requests to come work in places like that. I would do so again. But I’m not living there already, with roots and all kinds of reasons why I wouldn’t want to leave, or even other responsibilities that make me feel like I shouldn’t leave. Maybe it’s just justification, but I can imagine myself staying, or even going to, a place like that because I judge that the good I was doing for the many many patients that would otherwise be without medical care is greater than the horror of being involved in a circumstance like this one. I have twice left medical jobs because I couldn’t take working in that setting anymore (for non-medical reasons) and both times I felt (and still feel) incredible guilt because I knew that patients were going to suffer because I wasn’t there to provide the care they needed.
No question this situation is fucked up and the medical professionals should never have been put into such a position. But it isn’t their fault that they were. At least some of them are probably gutted by what happened. Maybe the thought they could hold off the infection. Maybe they thought the fetus would meet criteria for allowing a legal procedure any minute. They were wrong, but that doesn’t make them evil. There was no good course of action for them to take. I, or you, might have taken a different choice, but there is no guarantee that the counterfactual decision would have been overall better.
@TheRyGuy: who is the good guy?
@TheRyGuy: You know, I’ve been hearing about how I’m evil for so long, it stops having any impact.
Also, this post is not about immigration. These are two separate policies, two separate issues. It is possible to treat women having miscarriages without fear of prosecution AND spend more money on border enforcement. We can do both. I’m ok with that.
So, not only is your post an example of “look over there” it’s also a complete mischaracterization of all of us here.
@TheRyGuy:
Depsite the nonsequiter, bet taken.
How much do you want and what are the rules?
I prefer doing charity bets (i.e. we both identify a nonpartisan charity). For example, I think we need to compare for the same period of time and methods of validation.
Looking forward to hearing what next steps you want to take.
@Erik:
It’s exactly “their fault”. They had the resources and the knowledge to save lives and they didn’t. They should be punished right up to the limits of the law in their jurisdictions.
Amber Thurman is dead because of abortion drugs.
Blame abortion laws for medical malpractice.
@Erik: Whenever I hear this argument made, I always remember my uncle in Belfast. When his son’s started musing about supporting the Ulster Provisional Army, he said that he was not going to sacrifice his children to the cause and went from being an executive with Shell at the airport in Belfast to being the guy who fueled planes in New Zealand.
If when taking a stand costs and the person doesn’t pay, what does that person become?
@TheRyGuy:
If this were true, it’s all the more appalling that not only did Dementia Don fail to pass any immigration bill during his failed president, he killed the Sen. Lankford’s Border Patrol endorsed bipartisan border bill under Biden.
Nearly 65,000 Pregnancies From Rape Have Happened in States With Abortion Bans: Study (US News)
Please source the astronomical number of immigrant rapes, murders, etc. tantamount to these numbers. Keep your word, make the bet, and give us the data. Put up or shut up, big guy.
We’re waiting.
@Not the IT Dept.: recontextualizing my quote of “their fault”:
You don’t seem to be saying that they should be punished for being in the situation, but rather for the actions they took once they were in it (please correct me if I’ve misunderstood). It’s fine with me if you want to take the position that it is “their fault” for taking that action, and I agree that they are culpable for that decision. But you seem to be arguing that they have a clear legal (since you want to use the criminal justice system to punish the decision) affirmative duty to act to save the mother. This does not seem factually correct since the limits of the law in their jurisdiction would be “nothing” for the action they took. The other choice, in fact, would have been punished. I think that the law should be the reverse, but it isn’t and the medical team does not control the law. The way the law is written is not their fault.
Does that exonerate them ethically? I don’t think so, and any ethical failings are certainly their fault. But I also think it is a complicated situation.
@just nutha: And how many people would die if the doctors fled the states with abortion bans?
Because that is a dilemma a lot of medical staff in these states have to face — do they help as many people as they can (broken bones, heart attacks, etc) even with the restrictions on women’s health around pregnancy, or do they pick up and leave and leave this community with even fewer doctors/nurses/etc?
I can only guess, but I doubt your uncle in Belfast felt that executiving at the airport for Shell was a thing that absolutely needed to happen, or that he would be responsible for causing others to suffer if he didn’t do it.
I would note that saying X is bad, so stop talking about Y does not, in fact, make Y go away.
(It’s even worse when done in utter bad faith).
@just nutha: yup, I agree. It’s why I’ve made similar choices to your uncle. Some have said that I was cowardly for not staying to take a stand instead-essentially avoiding paying a price by not taking a stand. So I think you are holding him up as an example of a good choice, but maybe not? The choices as I see them are 1) stay, take a stand, pay a price; 2) stay, not take a stand, avoid paying a price; or 3) leave, not take a stand, not pay a price. Which of those do you think is most ethical? I would say, in a vacuum, 1 is most ethical, and 2 is least ethical. But also that any particular case does not occur in a vacuum.
I think it is right to examine the choices of those on the medical team. Maybe some of them are fine with the outcome. Fuck them. And maybe some of them made the bet that they would never be faced personally with this situation, and decided that the benefit of staying to help people and risk losing their bet was net better than the certainty of leaving patients without access to care. Maybe they could have made a wiser bet. Maybe not. I don’t know what those odds are. I’m just saying that it is a complex situation.
To answer your question, I think when someone doesn’t take a stand to avoid paying a price they become complicit, at least a little. And I’m not so confident that they aren’t paying a price anyway. Examining what those prices are and how to decide which price to pay is worth doing.
@TheRyGuy: how close does a woman have to be to death before she can get an abortion?
But I guess you don’t care about that. Not your problem, right?
This is worse than pre-Roe. Before Roe became law, my mother had a miscarriage. She was hospitalized, treated, and released a few days later. No legal interference by anyone. There was absolutely no question that treatment was necessary.
This is barbaric. We are regressing.
@TheRyGuy:
If you don’t trust Pro Publica, you can verify this story in The Guardian, The Texas Tribune, MSN, The Independent, The Tribune Express, and other outlets.
Just Google “Jasseli Barnica.”
@Paul L.: Isn’t it cute that the one thing all our little trolls have in common is that they hate and fear women, and are happy to see them die?
@Steven L. Taylor: Oh, yeah, the other thing they all have in common is utter bad faith. About everything except for their fear of women.
@wr: @wr:
And they worship Trump.
@Gustopher: My inner Manichaean doesn’t do comparative morality.
@Erik: My inner Manichaean doesn’t do comparative ethics either. Your comparison seems to me to finesse taking a stand by leaving but that may be a quibble. It seems to me that if the state policy becomes first, do harm, doctors have to leave to avoid violating their oath. The fact that the sick suffer is on the state.
ETA: In answer to Gus’ question.
@Erik: “But you seem to be arguing that they have a clear legal (since you want to use the criminal justice system to punish the decision) affirmative duty to act to save the mother.”
I’m saying they had a clear moral and professional duty to break that law to save lives. According to the oath they took as American doctors:
The duties the Declaration imposes transcend physician roles and specialties, professional associations, geographic boundaries and political divides.
Apply our knowledge and skills when needed, though doing so may put us at risk.
I get that it’s hard to be a hero and stand up against government idiocy, but to the best of my knowledge none of them were forced to be medical professionals. They voluntarily took on the responsibilities and not just until it got personally difficult. I’d have more respect for them if they’d resigned in protest at not being able to fulfill their professional duties for those women.
Source: https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/ama-declaration-professional-responsibility
With many of our – let’s call them “contrary” – regulars, I get the feeling that there is something to their complaint that they aren’t telling us.
I know, for instance, that when I went back to my high-school reunion, the working-class men seemed really battered and kicked around – with only a couple of exceptions. Whereas the women, by and large, even the non-college women, and the college-educated men, were doing ok. You know, life is rough, and that can touch anyone, but really, ok.
So, I get this feeling that our regulars (the sea-lions I don’t concern myself with) have this sort of feeling that they’ve been cheated and taken advantage of. Which they have. But they have been told to blame people who are not, in fact, to blame for what has happened to them. Immigrants. Women. Black people.
Part of what’s happened to them has been the result of changes and forces that nobody controls, or can control. I think a fair bit of globalization is like that. AND, they have been gaslighted by people who ought to have their interests at heart, but don’t. Who block policies that might make things a bit better, because it means more money for them.
Who paint people like me as evil, because if you ever thought I was sincere, you’d probably want to join me in trying to do the kind of things I want to do.
I would really like to understand and help men like those men at my class reunion. I can remember some of them coming to my house for (I think) my 8th birthday party. We have a history. I haven’t forgotten them. I just wish I knew how to help them.
I don’t think helping them would take anything away from women and minorities. Racism and sexism are things, but something Ta-Nehisi Coates taught me was that racism only ever enters the picture when someone is trying to take resources away from one group and give them to another.
Let me just note that I don’t think the working-class men of my age were on the receiving end of those resources. They are simply hurt, angry, and lashing out. It’s in a way that’s least likely to get them help, but I’ve learned that that is pretty typical.
@Jay L Gischer: Working class guy 40 years ago. Since I took my road less traveled, they’ve taken huge hits economically and socially in some cases. No, I don’t know what the country will do either.
@just nutha:
I did not intend to finesse that possibility, and it was certainly my goal to send a message both times I left, so I agree that this can also be taking a stand and in some cases I would agree that leaving was morally required. So basically I agree with you, and won’t say more out of deference to your inner Manichaean
@Not the IT Dept.:
I agree that they could have stood on moral or professional duty to justify intervention. To say that they had an affirmative duty, moral or professional, to break the law is a very strong statement, however. What would the boundaries of such a duty be? Should medical professionals (not just physicians-see my above list of non-physicians required to accomplish the intervention) always be required to put all other considerations secondary to patient care to save a life? What if it is hard to tell if something is life or death? You are correct that no one is required to go into health care, so I do think this is a defendable position, but there are serious moral and practical ramifications that taking that position entails. Let me be clear: I am largely on your side, but as I have said repeatedly this is a complex situation and I would stop short of making it a moral obligation to give up a livelihood and freedom in this case, even while I would have great admiration for anyone willing to do so.
Also, it is not the case that American physicians are bound by an oath. Some medical schools do an oral oath ceremony, but the wording of that oath varies and has no force other than what the individual gives it. Some organizations, like the AMA, that physicians belong to have ethical requirements that will get you kicked out if you violate them, but not a lot of physicians are AMA members. It may interest you to know that the original Hippocratic oath forbids assisting an abortion (and euthanasia too), so there’s that. So again, I agree with you that these ethical principles are generally appropriate to follow, but that doesn’t get me all the way to making it a moral obligation.
I’m pushing back because I think you have demonized the medical team based on a limited knowledge of the details of a complex situation and a standard that is not black and white. I’ve always had the impression that you are a thoughtful commenter, so I thought it was worth encouraging you to consider that this situation has elements that might make it less clear cut than your initial comment reflected.
@TheRyGuy: You really, really don’t want to start a whatabout war in which the total marginal deaths due to liberal policies are compared against the total marginal deaths due to reactionary policies. Climate change alone will cause you to lose by orders of magnitude, but even without that you can’t hope to overcome the cumulative effects of 2nd Amendment absolutism, commoditized health care, sabotage of public education, vaccine disinformation, and just plain wealth inequality. Conservatism kills, very efficiently. If there is an argument in its favor, it isn’t a “pro-life” argument.
@just nutha: Let’s think of a guy I don’t know personally all that well, but my sister and BIL do. He has done very well for himself as a contractor. Very well. He’s about 70 now, and his life is a void. He just bounced from one woman to the next, not really trusting any of them, and now has lots of money, a body that has a lot of issues, and very weak social connections.
He is vulnerable to certain machinations as a result. He is not happy. Things did not work out like he intended.
I mean, we could measure everything in terms of money, but I resist that. I mean, for me, that’s why I’m a Democrat – money isn’t everything. That money came at the price of broken bodies or broken relationships. If you operated on the strategy (which was handed down to you) that things will fall into place if you just have money, you have very likely been kicked in the ass. It hasn’t played out well.
Don’t y’all remember that big study that suggested older white people are committing suicide? I have names for those people. I know some of them.
Also, there are men like me, that did make the transition. We have navigated the passage, and we are better for it. I entered a profession that is considered anything but traditionally masculine (in spite of being heavily male-dominated, which is not something I wanted, ever), and did very well. I ruin the curve for my demographic. Big time.
I’ll say it again: I don’t want to go back. I won’t go back. I do want to bring some of those old friends forward. It may be too late. Maybe that’s why I’m feeling so depressed.
It is the abortion pill that is not “pro-life”. I am heartbroken to see this from a professor I respected. To allow people to access “medication”, with the terrible side effects it has, through online orders without concern for the mother or baby is where the real tragedy exists. I politely disagree with you.