Thursday, June 30, 2022

What Hath Got Wrot

I'm sure there's a moral issue there somewhere. For the life of me, I can't see the moral purpose in imposing it on the woman. For now. And in the Old West:
One example discussed was what to do if someone’s water breaks very early into the pregnancy. This could cause an infection, and the fetus is unlikely to survive, Phillips said. 
Before Roe was repealed, doctors would typically perform an abortion and other treatments to keep the patient healthy. But under the Texas trigger law, physicians would be faced with a conundrum, she said. When is the patient sick enough to warrant lifesaving care? Is it right away, since doctors know that the patient will get an infection that could complicate other care or put her safety at risk? Or does the doctor first have to let the patient reach that point to avoid legal liability? 
... 
There are also times when doctors perform abortions because they know a pregnancy will not be successful and the baby would die after being delivered, Phillips said. But under Texas’ laws allowed after Roe was repealed, pregnant people would be forced to deliver. 
“That’s a very emotionally devastating experience,” Phillips said. “And we know Texas does not have adequate mental health services.” 
Baird was one of roughly 2,200 people attending the AWHONN conference just outside Denver. She was sitting in a board meeting Friday morning when the Supreme Court announced its decision to overturn the law. With Roe’s end, nurses anticipate an even more difficult world for their patients who face high-risk pregnancies in which the mother or fetus’ survival is in danger. Doctors and nurses will face even more difficult decisions about when to intervene and recommend terminating a high-risk pregnancy for fear of criminalization. Birth rates will likely go up and Baird fears maternal mortality rates will follow, she said. The United States has the highest maternal mortality rate of all developed countries, with significant racial and ethnic disparities. Texas has among the highest pregnancy-related deaths in the nation.

But…pro-life!

Yeah; nothing is ever that simple.

I do like the consequence that women will have to be near death before we can allow the life-saving treatment. We can’t keep people from having guns because they are “crazy,” either. Because until they shoot a half-dozen people, they aren’t crazy enough to not have a gun. Until the woman is dead, was her life really in danger?

Maybe we should focus on people, instead of on abstract ideas. 

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1 comment:

  1. rustypickup8:31 AM

    Since we are on the consequences of Dobbs, here is as good as anywhere to comment on something that caught my notice when the draft decision was leaked and appears to have made it to the final opinion. Alito and the other reactionaries have some stomach churning views of Lochner.

    "West Coast Hotel signaled the demise of an entire line of important precedents that had protected an individual liberty right against state and federal health and welfare legislation." and "For example, American businesses and workers relied on Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45 (1905), and Adkins v. Children’s Hospital of D. C., 261 U. S. 525 (1923), to construct a laissez-faire economy that was free of substantial regulation." So with the demise of Lochner "we" all lost an individual liberty right against health and safety legislation. I am sure the industrial worker was devastated to lose their right to breath lead dust, cotton fibers, and coal dust, along with losing the right to lose a limb or worse to dangerous machinery, be crushed in a mine collapse or fall off a building without safety equipment. I am sure the 10 year old factory or mine worker was distraught to lose their right to participate in the majesty of the laissez-faire capitalist system. Words like liberty and freedom are twisted to just their opposite by our cynical advocates and jurists. Of course none of this is new, the same cynical logic was need to protect the rights, freedom and liberty of the slave owner to retrieve their property under the Fugitive Slave Act. The freedom, rights and liberties that matter are those that make the rich richer, the powerful more powerful, and the poor and powerless become exploited, sick, maimed and dead. It is the capability of the advocate and jurist to remove the human from the intellectual discussion of these ideals (to which they are well compensated) and to reduce human suffering to cold abstractions that is the foundation of this glittering edifice to which we are all supposed to genuflect in adoration of our new "rights, freedoms and liberties".

    Too much of the press coverage addresses these cases as if these supposed freedoms, liberty and rights have the same application and consequences for everyone. Of all the decisions out of the court this term, Dobbs seems to be the only one where the press has begun to address the human element, with questions about women with ectopic pregnancies, couples wanting IVF and other intersections of the law and humans.

    I am mostly in despair. Each decision has a roadmap for further challenges and further erosion of our individual freedoms and our ability to collectively respond to our societal challenges.

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