Two years ago, after Roe vs. Wade was overturned, my husband, a retired physician was asked by a family member to prescribe abortion pills for a young pregnant woman who lived in Ohio, and was past the six week abortion mandate adopted by many states. As a New Yorker and a very humane doctor, his immediate response was, "Of course." However, he needed some questions answered: 1. Was it an ectopic pregnancy? 2. Would someone care for this woman afterwards and finally, what COULD happen to him if the state discovered he had written the prescription. The response? "Jail time, a fine and a possible loss of his license." He offered an alternative: The woman could come to New York (he would cover the cost); he would find her a clinic and she could stay with us in New York. Apparently, someone had offered the same option in Pennsylvania, so the girl was helped and saved.
What will happen as more sates fail to approve this insane six-week aboortion ban, and physicians and health-care providers are forced to turn women away who are having a severe medical crisis from the fetus they are carrying? Just yesterday in Georgia a woman died since no one would treat her bleeding from a miscarriage; this is now commonplace. It is also a gross miscarriage of decency which compels health-care providers to turn their backs on women in distress.What will happen in 2025, when this new adminstration, not to be trusted, perhaps decides to enact a federal ban?
Immediately, more women may potetially die; others will lose the opportunity to ever have children again and some women will select to have children they can not care for. I just finished a terrifying article in THE NEW YORKER: "The Texas Exodus." Many decent ob-gyn physicians are leaving the state, because they are no longer thought of as health-care providers, but as criminals if they help a woman who seeks to have an abortion, even when medically justified. "From a medical standpoint, the treatment for aboriton and miscarriage is the same--and so, even though miscarriage care remained legal, physicians began putting it off or denying it outright." According to the author of the article, Stephania Taladrid, "After Roe was overturned, the laws in Texas were tightened further, so that abortion was banned at any stage of pregnancy, unless a woman was threatened with death or substantial impairment of a major bodily function. Violations could send practioners to prison for life."
Texas is not the only state where ob-gyn doctors are leaving. Any state that has criminalized the care of women's reproductive health has propelled a mass-exodus of its medical establishment, and now this is SO MANY states across the country. Not only that, according to the article, medical schools are discouraging students from going into these fields. Where, after all, can they safely practise medicine according to the Hippocratic Oath they sought to preserve. How many states will survive this political execution??
I find myself filled with grief and fury on so many levels. First of all, I am enraged with the many MEN who made these laws, and the indecency of the dysfunctional SUPREME COURT that over-turned the law of the land. WHAT WOMAN COULD SIGN ON FOR THIS AT THE BALLOT BOX????? I am angry at all the governments--state and otherwise, who have AGREED that this is acceptable. Are ANY of these men, these people, prepared to take care of all the unwanted children being born, particularly since 2025 is poised to CUT many of the needed social services for improverished children. I am angry at a country that saw the clock turning backwards and still elected this man to be president. And I feel, with a heavy-heart, what it must be like to be a woman who is impotent when her body betrays her, and there is no one around to offer medical or emotional support. I feel for the doctors who have trained for years, those who only wanted to help, and now who could be faced with possible criminal conviction. The moral compass of this country is GONE, and I, too, am impotent as I watch our world slowly slip away. It is not a world I signed on for either!
No comments:
Post a Comment