In the majority of this country, Americans’ medical care is determined by politicians instead of by doctors. That’s because a wave of anti-choice legislation has completely reoriented the women’s health landscape, ensuring that medical professionals are forced to ignore their best judgment in order to remain compliant with the law, according to a new report from the National Partnership for Women & Families.
“Politics are taking over our exam rooms and that is a dangerous, disturbing trend,” the National Partnership’s president, Debra L. Ness, noted in a statement released to coincide with the new findings. “More and more, lawmakers across the country are enacting laws that mandate how health care providers must practice medicine.”
Ness’ group argues that four different anti-abortion restrictions — unnecessary ultrasound requirements, biased counseling sessions, mandatory waiting periods, and regulations on the abortion pill — fall into a broad “bad medicine” category. Even though there’s no scientific evidence to justify those policies, they’re incredibly common. Thirty three states currently have at least one of those laws on the books, and 16 states have enacted all four types.
For instance, 26 states require abortion patients to wait 24, 48, or even 72 hours before receiving medical care. That forces their doctors to delay a time-sensitive procedure regardless of their professional opinion about whether the abortion should wait. A growing number of states are passing laws that require doctors to follow an outdated protocol for administering the abortion pill, which actually forces them to violate current practice and give their patients an unnecessarily high dosage of the medication. And ultrasound and counseling laws — which are each in place in more than 20 states — often make doctors present their patients with implicit anti-abortion messages that communicates they’re making the wrong choice, even if they’d rather not approach the medical procedure that way.
“It is time to take politics out of the exam room and return abortion care to women and their health care providers,” the report concludes.
Yeah but that is never going to happen until Americans smarten up and start voting these Republicans out of office and replacing them with pro-science, pro-women, and pro-choice Democrats.
The time is now people, before things get any more screwed up.
The information on that map is incorrect as far as Massachusetts goes. Informed consent is required as is parental permission for women under 18. But if the woman is unable to speak to her parents judicial bypass is available and the young woman is given the tools to go that route.
ReplyDeleteMost doctors I know vote R and send money to candidates. The D doctors are in the vast minority.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting how many male conservative doctors turn to politics in middle age. It's not that they become good politicians, interested in the welfare of people. They seem to become good teabagger politicians who want the opportunity to prevent the people who have been their patients from having adequate food, housing, education or health care. Do they become bored with the facade about caring for their patients so they grab any opportunity to destroy them? Or do they think that they'll be protecting their wealth and increasing it by turning to GOP politics? Or, maybe, they're tired of the power their medical expertise has given them and they seek a different king of power? In any event, the election of GOP doctor-politicians never bodes good for anyone.
ReplyDeleteBeaglemom
Breaks my heart when I see what COULD HAVE been in this country:
ReplyDeleteTo remind everyone just how much damage the GOP has done with their abuse of the filibuster, and to remind some progressives of the major bonehead moves they made in 2010.
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/reposted-375-bills-passed-by-dem-house-blocked-by-sen-filibuster-111th-congress-if-only/
Doctors today put loads of pressure on pregnant women to undergo cesareans when natural birth is a perfectly fine alternative. "Saves time."
ReplyDeleteThis is a big passion of mine and one of the only things I am critical about.