Bioethics, healthcare policy, and related issues.
Michelle Malkin now takes on the cause, and the rhetoric, of the misogynist anti-autonomy movement and its efforts to eliminate accessible reproductive healthcare.
Planned Parenthood is the largest single provider of prenatal, contraceptive, and abortion care in the US. In a country in which over 85% of all counties have no abortion services provider at all, in which health insurance plans are not required to provide contraception, and in which government-provided health programs for the poor are prohibited from providing abortion or, at times, even information about abortion, Planned Parenthood is often the only reproductive health provider available in many communities, and usually the only one available at reduced cost.
This drives the anti-woman brigade screaming crazy. There has been an organized campaign against Planned Parenthood by the sex-negative right wing for years, using a combination of smear tactics, lies, distortions, and political lobbying. Attacks range across everything from Margaret Sanger’s racism (don’t believe what you hear from hypocritical liars), Planned Parenthood’s practices of murder, malpractice, and coverup (don’t believe what you hear from anti-woman liars), and the - in Malkin’s terms - “obscene profits” Planned Parenthood makes from the lucrative business of providing subsidized healthcare to uninsured patients in poor communities (don’t believe what you hear from financially illiterate liars). The reason, of course, is that Planned Parenthood is doing what they are dead set on wiping out: making reproductive autonomy real for the most vulnerable women in America.
Michael Gerson, Bush administration tool and terminal sufferer from Conservative Comprehension Disorder, continues his pattern of getting everything exactly backwards in his Washington Post-sponsored campaign of attacks on Barack Obama. The day after April Fool’s Day (he must have missed a deadline), Gerson published another misinformed screed, this one claiming that Obama is an “extremist” on abortion for opposing laws that would have sentenced women to death. As usual with Gerson and the forced-pregnancy crowd generally, almost everything he says is factually false, and a repetition of standard right-wing myths. The column consists of nothing more than Gerson and the Post carrying water for the organized anti-woman crowd by repeating their well-worn talking points verbatim, with no pretense of originality or reportorial integrity. (more…)
“Reproductive Health Reality Check” is running an April Fool’s Day blog carnival against “Crisis Pregnancy Centers” that mislead patients seeking abortion with deliberately deceptive tactics and false information. “CPCs” are medical fraud - there is no other description for it. And they are an increasing problem as abortion services are continually targetted and women have fewer real options; currently they outnumber real, full-service reproductive health clinics 2:1.
College women are specifically targeted by these charlatans - sometimes with official support from the colleges themselves. Shockingly, not only does Georgetown University - a Catholic school - refuse to provide any form of contraception or abortion referral through its campus healthcare center or hospital, they apparently have also been blanketing the campus with anti-abortion stickers whose only pregnancy-care referral number is to a CPC, not a real health clinic. (Full disclosure: I have an MA from GU, from the early 90s, and their behavior in this regard was even more reprehensible then.) UNC Chapel Hill students have had to create their own sex-ed programs for fellow students, who mostly come from local high schools with “abstinence only” programs and literally don’t know anything about reproductive health, and then are targeted for lurid propaganda by a CPC located just off campus. Students at other schools have had to do the same.
CPCs are a threat to the larger patient population as well. Vicki Saporta of the National Abortion Federation documents many of the problems they represent, including their deceptive tactics, medical fraud, and the support they receive from the anti-choice right (including over $30 million in taxpayers’ money from the Bush administration, and more from state legislatures). Allyson Kirk reports her experience with a CPC that had deliberately located itself along the entranceway to a real health clinic; after receiving an appointment at the real clinic, she mistakenly entered the wrong door, deliberately made up to look like a pro-choice facility, and was treated as if she was the expected patient, then subjected to invasive questioning and fraudulent misinformation.
This kind of behavior would be criminal in a real health clinic. CPCs present themselves in a deliberately fraudulent manner, impersonating real clinics with trained personnel (almost invariably, nobody at a CPC is a licensed healthcare practitioner) offering appropriate healthcare services, for the deliberate purpose of manipulating patients’ decisions and foreclosing their options; they then defend themselves legally by denying that they are subject to the professional obligations of real healthcare providers. The more this is known, and the more their tactics are exposed, the safer women will be.
I don’t usually write link-only posts, but this is worthwhile and the stories some contributors have to share are appalling. Go take a look.
Mingle2 - a blog that links a lot of quizzes, surveys, and other online game-type-stuff, offers this nifty service: What’s My Blog Rated? Enter the URL of your blog, journal or other Web site, and it gives you an MPAA-style rating of its content.
I’m delighted to report Sufficient Scruples received the following:
Why, however?
This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
- sex (17x)
- abortion (14x)
- breast (6x)
- death (3x)
- drugs (2x)
- gay (1x)
Ah, yes. The old “dirty words census” protocol. Some anginal panty-sniffer with a clipboard checking off all the naughty words - predictably, mostly related to sex - that send his blood-pressure up gets to determine whether your interests - and your audience’s - are worthy or not. In this case, it’s obviously done with a script, which I guess is not as bad as that “CapAlert” clown crouching in the back of movie theaters obsessing over “the foulest of foul words” and “female body parts ghosting through clothing”. I gather this site is intended ironically, also. But even so, it functions as a kind of childish dirty joke - that is, that there could be such a rating system, and that it could function on a mere count of perfectly ordinary words like “sex”, “abortion”, “breast”, or “death”, and not be nonsensical or unrecognizable as a rating system, is a measure of how immature we still are as a society. We have allowed self-appointed evangelical Beavises & Buttheads to censor our airwaves, Super Bowl Halftime Shows, and now blogs (”It says ‘breast’, huhuhuh!” “NC-17!!!1!”). Mature people don’t let themselves to have their tastes dictated or censored by immature children.
From any reasonable perspective, rating Web sites on how often they use the words “sex” or “gay” makes as much sense as rating them on how often they use bold-face fonts, or adverbs - the idea that ordinary elements of language could be dangerous in themselves is comprehensible only in a world in which the crazies who have made certain elements of language objectionable are taken seriously. That world is long past its freshness date.
Hat Tip:: Echidne of the Snakes, and several others.
Making with the sorely overdue link-love: two months ago, Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon, and the best thing that ever happened to John Edwards) linked my prior post on right-wing propaganda about Margaret Sanger (as a way of attacking Planned Parenthood). She points out the fact that, in Sanger’s day, PP was actually anti-abortion (largely for reasons of the relative safety of the procedure, much lower then than now), and that the wingers seem to have no conception of the irony of their slanders.
The article generated a fascinating discussion thread, however (with minimal, but nonzero, trollage) - one that I only stumbled across today by following a visitor link (thanks!). I’m sorry to be so late on this but I encourage everyone to run over there; the discussion is interesting and, collectively, it includes a fascinating list of resources on the history of abortion, abortion and race, and sexual autonomy as seen from a variety of times and places, and presented in a variety of media (the rock-opera version of a 19th-century German play about the link between lack of sex ed and unplanned pregnancy sounds . . . wild - and I had no idea there was a whole list of early silent movies on the same topic!). Now I’ve got a lot more reading to do! So do you.
Joe Carter, rising star in the right-wing religious think tank milieu and blogger of the always-interesting Evangelical Outpost, makes one of his not-infrequent visits to fetus-fetish loopyland today. He contributes an overwrought and, basically, just kind of weird open letter to early-stage fetuses:
Let me begin by congratulating you on making it through the embryonic stage. Too many of our fellow humans don’t even make it as far as you have now. Many died of natural causes. Others were cut down prior to implantation by an abortifacient. Still others are trapped in the freezers of IVF clinics, in suspended animation awaiting their fate. . . .
He then offers “advice” to fetuses on how to avoid abortion (don’t have birth defects, don’t be part of an at-risk multiple pregnancy, etc.). Joe, it should be explained, is not dumb enough to think he can talk to fetuses. He just does it anyway. Naturally, all his “advice” to the fetus is really veiled criticism of the pregnant woman: for failing to carry three or more fetuses to term regardless of risk, for failing to have a child with birth defects, for being one of the roughly 0.04% of American women who pursue sex selection, or for having genetic-health preferences he doesn’t approve of.
Naturally as well, the piece goes to lengths to paint every possible alternative for a pregnant woman, except, notably, the one he approves of, as evidence of that woman’s depravity. He explicitly quotes the facts that:
Carrying three babies to term would more than double the woman’s risk of developing the most severe diseases of pregnancy, such as preeclampsia. The average triplet is born two months premature, significantly raising the risk of disabilities . . . .
But he excoriates the choice to reduce multiple pregnancies to avoid these risks. He characterizes the implantation of multiple embryos to increase chances of pregnancy (because of the high failure rates in IVF) as efforts “to save money” - but he previously harshly criticized Amy Richards, the subject of an infamous New York Times profile who had a selective reduction of her unplanned, accidental triplet pregnancy as well. So, not only is it immoral to subject yourself and your fetuses to the increased risk of multiple pregnancies, but it is also immoral to do anything about it if you do find yourself in that position. And, being unable to afford multiple rounds of IVF at $10,00 - $20,000 a shot is, of course, mere selfishness, but you’re forbidden to assert your own worth even if you didn’t pursue a multiple pregnancy “to save money”. (His pretended concern for the risks to the woman of a multiple pregnancy is clearly window-dressing; no woman is allowed to act to reduce that risk no matter how or why she encountered it.) You’re bad if you implant more than two embryos, you’re bad if you can’t afford not to, and you’re bad if you reduce the risks you face after stumbling through the previous two problems. In other words, taking any positive action to control your risks and outcomes according to your own values and desires is immoral.
The rest is just typical emotive fetus-swooning (”May our Lord have mercy on your poor fetal soul”; ” society has decided that it is better for you to be put to death”; “Your best hope is to pray and hope that others are praying for you too”) and woman-hating (there is not one reference to a woman’s “choice” that suggests there would be any positive benefit to her to control her own biological destiny; women’s autonomy is, literally, for Joe, nothing more than “the right to kill a fetus for any reason you choose” - not one of which such reasons he mentions or acknowledges might even exist). In none of the situations he mentions - birth defects, unplanned multiple pregnancies, risky pregnancies, genetic diagnosis - is there the slightest hint that being denied the right to control your own and your offspring’s future could be of any benefit. In every case, he picks what he considers the least defensible exercise of a woman’s choice not to carry a pregnancy - Down’s Syndrome, “squinting” - and mocks the very idea that anyone should be allowed to have preferences about the matter. More serious choices - Huntington’s Disease, Tay Sachs - are never mentioned, and clearly form no barrier to forcing women to continue a pregnancy against their will.
But what else would this be? I didn’t expect any sudden access of insight or empathy in such a post. I do find it useful to chart the clinical course of right-wing dementia, however. Now they’re talking to fetuses. What next? More importantly, is there an end stage, or are they all just going to wind up like Strom Thurmond, 100 years old, babbling like a banshee and yapping offensive remarks at women in their intermittent lucid moments? (OK - maybe this is the end stage. But how long can this go on?)
“Wendi Aarons” contributes an open letter to the McSweeney’s collection:
AN OPEN LETTER TO
MR. JAMES THATCHER,
BRAND MANAGER,
PROCTER & GAMBLE.February 6, 2007
Dear Mr. Thatcher,
I have been a loyal user of your Always maxi pads for over 20 years, and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core™ or Dri-Weave™ absorbency, I’d probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I’d certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts. But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic. I can’t tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there’s a little F-16 in my pants. . .
Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? Ever suffered from “the curse”? I’m guessing you haven’t. . . .
Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: “Have a Happy Period.”
Are you fucking kidding me? . . .
Today is International Women’s Day, and for that reason also Blog Against Sexism Day. I want to use the opportunity to take notice of the degree to which sexism is the root of many healthcare ethics issues affecting women, or, to put that another way, how much of women’s health issues arise from or are shaped by sexism and gender oppression.
[NB: I began this review just after the movie came out, almost 15 months ago, and never finished it. Finally, sitting around this weekend, sick and procrastinating, I decided to get it off the books. Here it is, for whoever’s still interested.]
The 2005 techno-thriller The Island hides a ham-handed anti-biotech message amidst its helicopters, gun battles, and explosions of various kinds. It trots out some of the standard “clone army” cliches, but goes beyond this, in places literally taking its dialog directly from the religious-right’s anti-science talking points. It fills a certain niche in the long line of biotech-nightmare morality plays, but with a particularly preachy, and notably slanted, take.
Every day is freedom day, autonomy day, self-determination day, choice day, as far as I’m concerned. Reproductive choice is one part of the freedom and autonomy we all enjoy throughout our lives - the birthright of every moral person, the foundation of morality in both its constraining and its liberating guises. That pervasive freedom, and the moral responsibility it brings, must remain inviolate if we are to be moral persons at all, and to act from that stance of moral agency in any and every part of our lives. In that sense, every threat to the moral dignity of the individual is equally a threat to freedom in all its aspects and manifestations.
If you are pro-freedom, you must be pro-choice - and pro-free-speech, and pro-marry-whom-you-want, and pro-fuck-whom-you-want-and-how-and-when-and-why, and pro-feminist, and pro-speak-truth-to-power, and pro-read-what-you-like, and pro-write-what-you-like, and pro-vegetarian, and pro-wear-leather, and pro-wear-makeup, and pro-hate-makeup, and pro-piercing, and pro-no-piercings, and pro-disability-righs, and pro-lift-up-every-voice-and-sing, and pro-hip, and pro-square, and pro-people-in-all-their-crazy-ways - for freedom enables all of these, and freedom is lost when any of these is banned. That’s good enough reason - a reason that makes a necessity - for being pro-choice and all the rest, every single day you value freedom.
No, not me (the “use/mention distinction” is hereby incorporated by reference). One of my students said it the other night, as an explanation for why she wasn’t feeling well and had to leave class.
I never know how to respond to that sort of thing.
Right-wingers have been beside themselves over a small cluster of deaths from toxic-shock-like syndrome, caused by infection by certain specific microorganisms, in patients who had obtained medical abortions using RU-486 or a similar preparation. Specifically, there have been 4 such deaths from 2003 - 2005, plus one previously; the most recent 4 all involved women in California who had been given an “off-label” vaginal suppository for Mifepristone Misoprostol (one of the two drugs used in the most-common medical abortion procedure), as opposed to taking it orally. These similarities prompted concern among health officials; the American College of Gynecology, which had endorsed the off-label usage, convened a study panel on the issue, and Planned Parenthood stopped using the vaginal-delivery method (which is otherwise more comfortable, easier, and more effective than oral delivery). The anti-choice contingent, however, of course began trumpeting the incidents as “proof” that all medical abortion was “unsafe”.
This “proof” suffers somewhat from certain facts: (a) no clear cause of the toxic syndrome in these cases has ever been determined; (b) the medication has been used safely, orally and vaginally, by over half a million women, as compared with only 5 deaths; (c) the death rate for medical abortion - as for every other form of early- to mid-term therapeutic abortion - is lower than that for childbirth, making abortion in general, and RU-486 in particular, the best choice for women from a safety perspective. Now, the results of ACOG’s review of the situation show that this safety differential favors RU-486 even more than was previously known.
Jill Stanek, raving but rarely comprehensible anti-choice knee-jerker, looks at this:
. . . and comes to this conclusion:
The cartoonist who penned this is liberal. However, the cartoon can be taken two ways, [which is] I’m sure not Ohman’s original intent.
Yeah, I’m sure it wasn’t. In fact, I’m sure there’s almost no one but a committed anti-choicer who would look at the choice between safe and legal abortion and widespread abuse, death, and disability from illegal abortions, and think there’s more than one good option.
It’s really hard, sometimes, to resign yourself to living in a world with these people in it.
The Dominican Republic legislature narrowly defeated an amendment to a bill that would have permitted abortions in cases of pregnancy by rape. The amendment was heavily opposed by the Catholic church and other religious right-wingers; the local bishop claims the issue has nothing to do with religion.
The House of Representatives of the Dominican Republic has backed away from legalizing abortion in cases of rape in a new National Penal Code, approved on Tuesday. The new Code now goes to the Senate for approval.
Last week lawmakers presented the reformed penal code, the first draft of which included a clause legalizing abortion in cases of rape. The initial draft drew widespread protests from the Dominican Republic Bishops’ Conference and other organizations.
Although it initially appeared that the modified Code - including the abortion legalization clause - would be approved, lawmakers in the House were persuaded by pro-life lobbyists not to include the clause in the final draft. . . .
Last week, the Secretary General of the Bishops’ Conference, Bishop Ramon Benito Angeles, explained that an abortion in the case of a rape does not benefit the woman who has suffered such a trauma. . . .“Abortion is not a religious issue, it’s a human rights issue. Those in favor of abortion paint the discussion as if this were a question of imposing religion. This is not about an argument between religions. Today in the Dominican Republican we are being plagued by apparently uncontrollable violence. Every day the media surprises us with more reports of horrendous deaths and deplorable events,” the bishop said.
There you have it. Abortion is terrorism, not having to bear a rapist’s child is of no benefit to women, and the Catholic church’s concerted efforts to impose forced pregnancy and forced childbirth on rape survivors have nothing to do with imposing their religious beliefs on others; women’s rejection of the Church’s teachings about forced childbirth do not constitute an argument between religious beliefs.
That clears that up.
The Alan Guttmacher Institute has an excellent national roundup of pending legislation aimed at reducing reproductive freedom.
Read it and weep:
Abortion
Abortion Bans to Replace Roe
‘Choose Life’ License Plates
Crisis Pregnancy Centers/Alternatives to Abortion
Fetal Pain
Mandatory Counseling and Waiting Periods
Medication Abortion
Minors Reporting
Parental Involvement
‘Partial-Birth’ Abortion
Physician-Only Requirements
Postviability Abortion
Private Insurance Coverage of Abortion
Protecting Access to Abortion
Protecting Access to Clinics
Public Funding of Abortion
Requiring Abortion Providers to Have Hospital Privileges
Reporting Statistical Information to State Agencies
Stem-Cell and Embryo Research
Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers
See Also:
Contraception and Prevention: Abortion-Related Restrictions on State Family Planning Funds
Fetal Assault
Refusal Clauses: Abortion Services (See also General Medical Services)
Contraception & Prevention
Abortion-Related Restrictions on State Family Planning Funds
Contraceptive Coverage
Emergency Contraception
Requiring Pharmacists or Pharmacies to Dispense Contraception
State Medicaid Family Planning Eligibility Expansions
See Also:
Youth: Child Abuse Reporting
Refusal Clauses: Contraceptive Services (See also General Medical Services)
HIV Testing of Infants and Pregnant Women
Nonmedical Use of Ultrasound
Substance Abuse During Pregnancy
Refusal Clauses
Abortion Services
Contraceptive Services
General Medical Services
Minors Access to Reproductive Health
Sex Education
See Also:
Abortion: Minors Reporting
Abortion: Parental Involvement
Contraception & Prevention: Parental Involvement
Hat tip: Reproductive Rights Blog
In her continual display of not getting it, “Jacquefromtexas” offers another bit of inspired reasoning: because you can’t kill your dog, abortions must be illegal.
Every once in a while, I’ll have a random thought that inspires anger in me. Yesterday, when feeding my dog a treat, I had such a thought.
Daisy is the sweetest dog in all Dogdom, the epitome of all cuteness. . . .
Daisy is dependant on me. Daisy requires me to give her food and water, to keep her warm, to keep her clean and healthy. She requires me to give her love and protection from those big, scary thunderstorms.[M]ay I use forceps to twist off her body parts? May I stick scissors at the base of her skull and suck out her brain? May I immerse her in a saline bath to burn her to death both inside and out? How about dismembering her with a suction aspirator?
How about just not giving her food and water? . . .
Bottom line is this: There is such a thing as moral responsibility towards the weak and vulnerable- especially one’s very own children. That is why child abuse and neglect is criminal, as is animal cruelty and neglect.
[emphasis, and spelling errors, original]
Good thinking.
There’s a weird freak-show quality to internecine dustups between extreme right-wingers, especially on the religious anti-sex front. One is going on now as to who is the most authentically sex-negative. Worrisomely, though, one of the combatants is a professional counselor who uses her position, and credentials, to push a highly personal agenda while also pulling rank on people with dissenting opinions.
“Jacquefromtexas” is an MSSW (though not, apparently, with a clinical social work license). She writes a blog mostly devoted to simplistic anti-choice rants, and she also serves as an “expert” on About.com’s answer-board devoted to abortion, where she cites her professional credentials to bolster her standing. One would think that would impose on her an obligation to act within the understood bounds of professional behavior - to support those she counsels in developing and exercising their independence, to remain neutral in assisting them in working through their issues, to acquire and diligently use factually correct and scientific information when providing factual input, and to avoid using her position to promote a personal agenda through her clients. One might also hope it would be exercised by someone with the maturity to stay out of public pissing fights with people with other opinions. In this case, one would be disappointed (all quotes below from About.com except where noted).
“Non-directive counseling:”
I joined AllExperts to counter to pro-abortion opinions and irresponsibility that I saw, like the downright lies that people like “Angel” wrote. . . . I share your concerns and am pleased to report that neither myself nor the other expert who now answers abortion questions would ever promote or refer for an abortion. . . .
[H]aving abortions hurt your body and your ability to have children but oral contraceptives are bad for you, too. They make you infertile (that’s there job) and hurt your ability to conceive later. They are also abortifacient, which means you may not be having surgical abortions, but you’re still aborting by using the pills. If you heart has changed toward abortion and feel like it is morally wrong, then oral contraceptives are not a good choice for you, either. . . .
I think you’re transferring some of that pain and burden onto yourself, saying that because you aborted 3 of your babies, you don’t deserve to have another because of the risks you created. Nicole, God doesn’t work that way. He will forgive you and bless you if you recognize that what you did (abortion and premarital sex) was wrong and you seek Jesus Christ’s sacrifice for forgiveness. If you beleive that He was the son of God, died to your salvation and rose again, then you can be saved and reunited with your children. And any guilt or shame can be taken from you and God can reward you with healthy children if He chooses to. . . . There is so much forgiveness, Nicole. So much. [NB: This was to a questioner who hadn’t mentioned feeling guilty, or having any religious feelings whatsoever.]
My friends [who had abortions] tell me that the feelings of guilt, grief and shame almost never go away. Many feel like they chose themselves over their babies, that they were selfish and let their babies down and feel like a murderer. Many of them report having nightmares of killing babies, of bloody babies crying, or just wake up to a crying baby that’s not there. . . . [etc.]
“Professional neutrality”:
I joined AllExperts to counter to pro-abortion opinions . . . I commonly refer to places that provide free pregnancy help [i.e., anti-choice “crisis pregnancy centers”] . . . [N]either myself nor the other expert who now answers abortion questions would ever promote or refer for an abortion.
Abortion clinics charge for ultrasounds and the counseling that a person receives there is minimal. All services provided by non-profit pregnancy centers are comprehensive and free. . . .
The latter is particularly odd in light of this response:
[Question:] I want to ask you a question but you dont say if you are balanced in your opinion. . . . Can you say if you answer that you are fair and accurate or biased?
While I appreciate your question, I’m afraid I can not answer it. I am a professional and bound by a Code of Ethics that forbids me from answering personal questions about myself.
WTF? I’ve reviewed the entire National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics and the Clinical Social Work Federation Code of Ethics; one or the other is also the basis for most codes of ethics of state or regional social work societies in the US. I cannot find anything even remotely similar to the above in either of them. Certainly no medical association has a code of ethics that prohibits telling your patients whether you are going to be honest with them! The NASW Code requires, among other things:
Social workers treat each person in a caring and respectful fashion, mindful of individual differences and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers promote clients’ socially responsible self-determination. . . .
Social workers respect and promote the right of clients to self-determination and assist clients in their efforts to identify and clarify their goals. . . .
Social workers should provide services to clients only in the context of a professional relationship based, when appropriate, on valid informed consent. . . . Social workers should provide clients with an opportunity to ask questions.
Social workers should be alert to and avoid conflicts of interest that interfere with the exercise of professional discretion and impartial judgment. Social workers should inform clients when a real or potential conflict of interest arises . . . .
Social workers should not take unfair advantage of any professional relationship or exploit others to further their personal, religious, political, or business interests. . . .
It seems obvious that she evades answering the question above because, in her case, the answer would have to be “No.” It’s certain that no interpretation of professional ethics imposes such an answer; in fact, answering that question - and the only responsible position is to be able truthfully to say “Yes” - is fundamental to setting a supportive and trust-inspiring groundwork for counseling. If, of course, that’s one of your priorities.
”Factual accuracy:”
I am NOT pro-birth control because birth control causes abortions. If you did any research then you’d know that most birth control methods inhibit implantation, causing early abortions. Furthermore, 80% of abortions are performed on women who use birth control and studies show that women on birth control have more sexual intercourse than others and thus are more likely to get pregnant. . . .
Statistics show that 93% of women regret their abortions. Women are 9 times more likely to kill themselves after an abortion. Women who abort often suffer from post-traumatic stress, nightmares and depression. Eating disorders, alcoholism, and drug abuse are more common in post-abortive women. Also, 47% of all abortions are REPEATS meaning that having one abortion often leads to having another because women try to replace the child they lost and realize that circumstances haven’t changed. Promiscuity and the self-esteem issues that accompany it are also prominent in women who have aborted. . . .
Your body that sent out a set of hormones to change your body for childbirth is traumatized by the unatural loss of the child (most miscarriages come from a lack of these hormones, which is less traumatic), so there are hormones that go crazy, mutating cells (like breast cells to turn them into milk-producing cells) that never get the last of the hormones and stay mutated. This makes them cancer prone. . . .
And then there’s the question of maturity - or the amusing display of its lack that results when two anti-choicers get sucked into a holiness contest:
[In response to another anti-choice poster on About.com who criticized her for not being aggressive enough(!):]
Woah there, zealous idiot! How stupid must someone be to direct the attack at an non-offending individual rather than the website itself? . . . Furthermore, she indicates just how uninformed a pro-lifer that she is . . . I love how she chides me for not being pro-birth control . . . Yes, may God have mercy on me for not advocating birth control that slaughters millions of lives by it’s abortifacient action! . . .
It goes on:
I’m going to have this [poster’s comment] removed, but nonetheless I am further annoyed by her idiocy. Abstinence is not birth control and she did nothing to suggest that. She’s trying to save face and failed miserably. . . .
All she’s done is discourage abortion-minded from contacting me and allowing me to give them the resources they need to choose life. Way to cut off your nose to spite your face, at the expense of those unborn babies you claim to love so much.
And on:
Wow, this chick needs a hobby. Perhaps she should direct all that energy toward actually doing something rather than attacking those that do.
So, Jacque, for being the most childish self-described “professional” in easy sight, for asserting your standing in an autonomy-centered, non-directive, healing profession for the explicit and admitted purpose of directing those who come to you into a choice of actions you personally have made for them ahead of time, for spreading long-discredited anti-choice propaganda as fact, for using bizarre, false, and ideologically based definitions of ordinary factual terms like “pregnancy”, “abortion”, and “birth control”, for explicitly refusing to reveal your ideological biases and schemes when asked directly about them while citing as justification professional codes that require the exact opposite, and for demeaning your own profession with these immature antics and your display of childish rancor at a total stranger on two public Web sites, you are officially (albeit belatedly - I had a rough weekend) the Stegosaurus of the Week. Next time try thinking with the cerebral ganglion, not the sacral one.
Our lovely “Stegosaurus of the Week” Award GIF: Official Winners may feel free to add it to their Web sites:
In closing, I have to say I’m actually quite concerned about this. It’s one thing to hear this kind of nonsense from the typical anti-choicer - and most of the above is just old propaganda rehashed. But I think it’s entirely another to see it from someone who claims to be a professional in the healing fields, and who sets herself up in a quasi-clinical role (she apparently is not an LCSW, but she does refer to herself as a “counselor” on About.com, and frequently encourages questioners to e-mail her privately so she can “counsel” or “work with” them). I think statements and behavior such as the above are gross violations of professional ethics, and very worrisome in someone, however immature and inexperienced, who is both well along in training (she’s in a doctoral program - one which apparently hasn’t noticed, or doesn’t care about, behavior like the above!) and already presumes to act in a quasi-professional capacity.
It’s true that the NASW Code of Ethics is filled with weasel words like “socially responsible self-determination”, and various justifications for violating client autonomy and confidentiality, but it’s also clear that they are aimed at questions of obvious and overt threat to others. I would be amazed that anyone in responsibility there would think it was acceptable for a social-worker/counselor who was approached by a client saying she was ambivalent about a potential abortion to then engage in a self-interested and specifically slanted program of influence to encourage that client to make one and only one choice that had been decided upon by the counselor before the client even spoke.
I was tempted to file a complaint about this person. I would never attempt to personally harass an ordinary activist, and this is why I do not support tactics such as posting personal contact information about, or contacting the employers of, people I disagree with. But professionals must be held to professional standards, whatever their personal views may be, and especially whether or not those views match those of their clients. I did look into her licensure status - apparently she does not have a license, so she has no license to revoke. I have a feeling that complaining to her professional training program (it can be discerned on the Web, although she does not advertise it) would be going too far, but I also have the feeling that letting someone this hostile to patient autonomy run loose would be worse. Finally, I don’t want to become one of those bloggers who make it their business to harass others, as we’ve seen too many doing - yet I don’t think that simply behaving unprofessionally on a blog grants you immunity from professional discipline. In the end, I think I’ll let it go, but I can’t tell you how much contempt I have for this abuse of training and professional standards.
From Frank Rich’s column yesterday:
That the administration’s stem-cell policy is a political fiasco for its proponents is evident from a single fact: Bill Frist, the most craven politician in Washington, ditched the president. In past pandering to his party’s far-right fringe, Mr. Frist, who calls himself a doctor, misdiagnosed the comatose Terri Schiavo’s condition after watching her on videotape and, in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, refused to dispute an abstinence program’s canard that tears and sweat could transmit AIDS. If Senator Frist is belatedly standing up for stem-cell research, you can bet he’s read some eye-popping polls. His ignorance about H.I.V. notwithstanding, he also knows that the facts about stem cells are not on Mr. Bush’s side.
[emphasis added]
Yep.
Hat tip: Guerrillawomen.
The word is now going out from last week’s Bioethics & Politics conference, organized by Glen McGee at the Alden March Institute in Albany. (I am so sick that I couldn’t attend!) Wesley Smith’s take on it is interesting. He was a prominent representative of the conservative side at the meeting, and participated in a panel discussion. He comments that he views the field of bioethics as a kind of public policy debating ground, in which competing societal visions vie for social influence:
I suggested that (macro) bioethics [bioethics “which tries to impact public policy, culture, and the methods by which {clinical} bioethics is conducted”] is not a discourse and not a matter of bioethicists being “neutral arbiters” of complex moral dilemmas. Nor, is it a profession, as there is no specific training required to become a bioethicist, no state licensing, no professional discipline, etc. Rather, mainstream bioethics is a political and social movement, and like all such movements, seeks to implement policy based on a distinct ideology. . . .
The cause of the divide is fundamental: Mainstream bioethicists reject the intrinsic value of human life and instead have embraced personhood theory. Those of us perceived to be in the other camp, accept the intrinsic value of human life. This divide is too wide for the two sides to reach accommodation. Thus, we will always be in conflict.
But, this is good. These conflicts are how democracies decide important issues. Moreover, we will not decide how it all turns out. The people will through our democratic institutions. Thus those of us in the fray owe it to society to vigorously and energetically debate these matters. But how we do that is important. The people have a right to make informed decisions based on accurate information.
Without accusing Smith of being disingenuous, it seems to me there is a great deal of that is both wrong and highly politically convenient (to the conservative side) in these remarks.
“Faithmouse” is a painfully sincere cartoonist who specializes in incomprehensible images of fetuses doing cutesy things, in the apparent belief that the morality of abortion is determined by the wisdom of Little Jeffy from The Family Circle. But occasionally he makes himself clear enough that you can understand what he’s saying. Here’s an example:
If you can’t see it clearly in the reduced-size image, a cute pink fetus is lounging in a wingback chair, reading “Modern Fetus” magazine, inside a soft, red, squishy-walled apartment with the sign “Womb Sweet Womb” hanging on the wall. The fetus is plugged into the wall through an umbilical cord that terminates in an electrical outlet. Its baseball cap is hanging from a peg on the wall, a ventilator duct appears on the other wall, and - displaying a worrisome grasp of anatomy - a heart-shaped heart and other organs are visible through a huge gap in the side wall, next to a set of large, coin-operated binoculars like you find at outdoor public attractions. (?) A gloved hand is bursting through the screen door and slamming down the front door of the apartment, holding an “Eviction Notice”.
Yep. Your uterus is the home of a fetus. Your cervix is merely the front door of its “apartment”, and your bodily organs are merely the walls, floor, wiring, and ventilation ducts of its abode. Acting on your own body, or having a doctor do so on your behalf, is equivalent to bursting down the door of someone else’s home. (I admit, I have no freaking idea what the binoculars are for.) And, of course, it’s a violent invasion - tearing through the screen, ripping off the door, and dragging the little wobbly-head-doll fetus out into the cold, like a thug or a home invader, or at best a slumlord. You don’t, of course, have the right to treat your own body as your own body if someone else is living in it - that would be cruel.
Amazingly enough, also, the cartoon manages to show the inside of a woman’s body without ever implying that there’s actually a woman present. The fetus is fully characterized - it not only looks like a typical cartoon image of a fully-developed child, but it has intellectual interests, possessions, and a home with little domestic touches hanging on the walls. The woman is represented only by the grossly distorted image of the walls of her uterus, which actually belongs to the fetus as its dwelling place. (When you see someone’s apartment, you don’t think “Oh, here’s the landlord’s real estate investment” - you think “Oh, here is this person’s apartment“. Here, the woman’s entire body, including the internal organs visible through the “window” in her uterus - it’s a “womb with a view” - get it? - are the dwelling place of this fetus; they are its home, not her body.)
So, if you want to know what you are to the right wing, there you have it. You are the property of your own fetus - its home, its “castle”. Your uterus is as sacrosanct against “home invasion” - by you - as a citizen’s home is against thugs or intruders. You have no right of “trespass” on your own body. And your fetus is a fully-developed person with its own tastes in home decoration; you are nothing but some walls and tubing. Do be sure to keep the yard picked up, though; it’s your obligation as landlord.
