We’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s important, so I wanted to raise it again. From Plunderbund:
John Kasich is just optimistic that you’ll pull through
Until yesterday, Ohio law allowed exceptions to the informed consent rigamarole in the event of “an immediate threat of serious risk to the… physical health of the woman from the continuation of the pregnancy.” While this verbiage wasn’t necessarily ideal, it was broad enough that doctors could practice appropriately.
With Kasich’s signature of the budget, physicians can only avoid the mandatory ultrasound “in order to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to avoid a serious risk of the substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman that delay in the performance or inducement of the abortion would create.”Section 2919.16(K) spells out that the conditions allowing for immediate abortion:
includes pre-eclampsia, inevitable abortion, and premature rupture of the membranes, may include, but is not limited to, diabetes and multiple sclerosis, and does not include a condition related to the woman’s mental health.These rules are incredibly narrow.
The list of possible complications that can maim or kill goes on and on: anemia, arrhythmia, brainstem infarction, broken tailbone or ribs, cardiopulmonary arrest, diastasis recti, eclampsia, embolism, exacerbation of epilepsy, immunosuppression, infection, gestational diabetes, gestational trophoblastic disease, hemorrhage, hypoxemia, increased intracranial pressure, mitral valve stenosis, obstetric fistula,placental abruption, postpartum depression, prolapsed uterus, severe scarring, increased spousal abuse, third or fourth degree laceration, thrombocytopenic purpura, peripartum cardiomyopathy, and more.
Before the passage of the budget, a number of OB-GYNs protested this provision. In the past, they’ve testified that it would make them hesitate before treating women. This is consciously modeled after the Irish law that resulted in the death of Savita Halappanavar.
This should be debated. Conservatives and media limit the scope of discussion on abortion restrictions to an unwanted pregnancy, a woman seeking an abortion, but that isn’t how these laws read. Who wrote the specific medical exceptions? The lobbyists who introduced these laws all over the country? Did they even bother to consult a physician?
Conservatives at the state and national level should have to respond to specific questions on how these laws apply to women in a medical emergency. They had this debate in Ireland, too late.
Frankensteinbeck
Why would they? Haven’t they made it clear that they don’t care about the realities of the situation? I don’t just mean empirically, I mean they’ve said repeatedly that they want to make abortion illegal and there ARE no other concerns. God told them to do it. That’s it, reasoning stops there. Never assume the other person is using logic or thinking things through. Humans don’t do that by default, it’s something they have to work at.
PurpleGirl
That list doesn’t include one condition that will almost certainly kill a woman and that many hospitals (especially Catholic ones) do not want to handle — ectopic pregnancy. BJ has several readers who have relatives or friends who have struggled with this condition.
So many conservatives seem to think that pregnancies just occur without problems and is healthy no matter what. And it isn’t. It may be natural and normal but it isn’t guaranteed to be healthy or have a perfect outcome.
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
I actual had a hair-raising delivery where none of the conservative anti-abortion lawyers exceptions would have applied. It ended up okay, but it happens fast. You know, “no one could have predicted”. Do I need one of their lawyers in the room to make a ruling?
aimai
I just don’t know what to do with my rage. I wish every Democratic woman in the house, senate, or any other high office would be willing to fly to Ohio and Texas and get herself arrested protesting these laws. I don’t understand why its left up to the women in each state to fight for their own lives in this way. These laws apply to women at the most vulnerable time of their lives–during a pregnancy–in which days and minutes count not only legally but in terms of your health and future.
If you have ever been pregnant or associated with a woman who can get pregnant (say, your mother, sister, wife, daughter) you get it–or you would if you weren’t a right wing psychopath–pregnancy is dangerous and putting road blocks in the way of proper medical treatement of a pregnancy gone wrong is going to destroy lives financially, emotionally, and literally.
Xenos
I don’t know if it applies to the Ohio law, but there are plenty of ‘pro-lifers’ out there who are opposed to ending ectopic pregnancies. That is just wishing death on people.
How many pointless deaths in Ohio will be necessary to create a backlash? Because all the warnings in the world don’t seem to be capable of making these people give a shit about the health and safety of women.
Edit: Purplegirl got there first on the point about ectopic pregnancies. I suppose the fundies and natural law believers can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that a certain percentage of pregnancies are, quite naturally, killers.
Shakezula
For those of us who aren’t aware of history (i.e. the entire GOP) telling doctors what they must restrict the services they provide to those arbitrarily deemed necessary by non-practitioners Does. Not. Work.
Kay
@Xenos:
My fear is they’re going to transfer the woman rather than make the call-make it someone else’s problem. That’s already happened with the restrictions on abortion in religious hospitals. We won’t know, we won’t be able to determine if it’s having an effect on care. Too, it will be a small number in terms of all births in the US, so it will be difficult to pin down.
MomSense
I just can’t imagine any of the men who make these laws being willing to have any kind of decision about medical treatment made by the legislature.
I just want to ask the Christianists why God would have given women the ability and privilege to bring life into the world if God didn’t trust women to handle the responsibility?
Are women deserving of autonomy over their bodies or not? This is the question I wish they would answer directly.
Emma
If someone had ever told me that Catholic-no-matter-what bloody Ireland was going to be fighting off the religious maniacs better than the United States I would have laughed in their faces. Silly me.
Nehemiah Scudder, anyone?
Xenos
@Kay: Every so often I forget the last decades of struggle over the issue, and realize that the only sensible criminal sanctions that should apply would be for a doctor or hospital that refuses to preform an abortion when it is needed for the health and safety of the mother. The religious hospitals are guilty of reckless disregard of their clients’ well being over a matter of political correctness. They should be driven out of the business.
Time to move the goalposts, already.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
No, they just don’t care. Have you ever had a debate where you present a fact (or facts plural) that disprove the other person’s argument, and they don’t acknowledge it? They don’t counter-argue, the words just bounce off as if they weren’t heard. I know you have, because you get involved in comments sections on Balloon Juice. That is going on here. Your real world circumstances don’t matter. The suffering and death these laws will cause don’t matter. In fact, since that suffering and death is counter to dogma, it isn’t believable and can be ignored, even when it’s right in front of them. Even if they did believe you, it’s not relevant. ‘Abortion must be illegal’ is their position, they’ve declared it a moral absolute, and everything else is interpreted based on that absolute truth.
@MomSense:
They have answered it, repeatedly. No one is allowed autonomy over anything if it doesn’t fall within their religious guidelines. Admittedly, they only occasionally say it out loud in so many words, because they know it sounds offensive. They don’t care that it IS offensive, you understand, only how it SOUNDS and what they should SAY to avoid backlash.
Shakezula
@MomSense: They’d say no.
debbie
I get blocked as spam here when I post a link, but Charles Pierce had a great take — and a great photo of Kasich — on this bit of the budget on his blog.
All of the provisions regarding abortion are bullshit, as is much of the budget in general, but few people know that that the budget is 6,000 pages long. It towers over the length of the ACA that so many conservatives shrieked was too long.
When does this kind of hypocrisy get exposed for what it is?
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Kay: No, a Conservative.
ETA: Or a preacher.
Kay
@Xenos:
At one time, one could say “well, you knew it was a religious hospital”. I don’t think that’s a defense, but it is something. That isn’t true anymore, because they’re merging to survive with non-profits and for-profits. The name isn’t even a clue. You’d basically have to interview hospital staff prior to admission.
Conway in Kentucky has been good on this. He blocked a hospital merger on just this issue as AG. He’s the Democrat Rand Paul (Mr. Personhood) beat, ironically enough. He’s also a Catholic, so maybe he was plugged in to it in a way that another person might not be. It’s really an issue of informed consent at this point.
Betty Cracker
Sadly, someone (or several someones) is going to have to die an agonizing death like Savita Halappanavar to wake people up on this. It sucks, but it seems that a high-profile death is required to bring an issue front and center.
I had a high-risk pregnancy and delivered in a Catholic-run hospital (I am an atheist). This was years ago, before the GOP decided to so flagrantly go spelunking in our junk. I’d go to a different hospital today.
Kay
@debbie:
It’s so dishonest how media and Kasich are portraying the education budget. It’s a huge hit to local public schools, in two different ways. You know, if newspapers aren’t going to bother to actually read/understand something, they shouldn’t OPINE on it. Kasich pulled another fast one with the bullshit comparisons to his austerity budgets that he supplied them and they dutifully reprinted, entire. This is not adding value, media! If I want to read a campaign email from the GOP, I’ll get that free!
pat
I don’t understand. Isn’t an ectopic pregnancy OUTSIDE THE UTERUS and therefore can not be carried to term? How on earth can that be considered an abortion?
And WHERE ARE THE DOCTORS. They ought to be in the state houses screaming SHAME along with the women.
debbie
@Kay:
Agreed. I’d bet there isn’t a single honest sentence in the whole thing.
Most of the independent weeklies in Columbus have been bought up by the Dispatch which accounts for the lack of critical articles. I’ve seen a couple employment ads for an unnamed start-up progressive paper, so maybe things will improve for the next election.
debbie
@pat:
There’s a bill pending in some committee somewhere in the Ohio Statehouse that redefines a fetus as starting at the point of fertilization, largely to combat some of the Plan B drugs that are, for the moment, sold over the counter.
rikyrah
beat that azz, Kay.
tell it.
tell the truth on these assholes.
AHH onna Droid
@aimai: If u read no longer qivering, it is incredible the risks Vickie took, nearly-or scratch that, actually-leaving her kids to the mercy of a cowardly abuser. Vickie wanted to believe. Real bad.
AHH onna Droid
@Emma: If the rcc were.smarter they would have secretly funded the proddie paramilitary groups to keep going. No need to fund ira, Americans took care of that.
Seanly
Seriously, all these anti-choice douchebags can DIAF. I’m so sick of these assholes.
Another Halocene Human
This whole Catholic hospital thing needs more press. We know, but most of the public is unaware.
I’m grateful for the public officials who have fought back.
They always try to apply their twisted values to the merged hospital. Thank you purplegirl for the reminder about ectopic pregnancies. I mean, it’s sick. But they will sit by when a woman is hemorrhaging too because maybe the live fetus will pass “normally”.
You wouldn’t treat a mare or a cow in distress like that, why a human? But people don’t live on the barnyard anymore. Means these fables can take hold.
Kay
@debbie:
It’s so political, that budget. They were getting hammered for “lowering taxes” by simply shifting taxes to the local level, so now for school budgets they made it harder to raise local taxes locally. Pure politics. No practical thought went into that at all. The schools still need the money-just making the political problem go away doesn’t change that.
The jerk will be strutting around as an “education governor” while local public schools starve, and school districts have to explain this complex tax dodge to voters.
pat
@debbie:
As I recall, in an ectopic pregnancy the zygote or blastocyst implants in the fallopian tube and doesn’t make it into the uterus. There is NO WAY this pregnancy can be carried to term. The fallopian tube will rupture, and the likely outcome is death if it is not treated immediately.
I simply don’t understand what is wrong with these sociopaths.
well, I guess that is the problem. They are sociopaths.
Ignorant undeducated sociopaths.
Another Halocene Human
I like this talk at TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/rufus_griscom_alisa_volkman_let_s_talk_parenting_taboos.html
It reminded me of the Finnish box for newborns (wouldn’t that help with PPD). Also made me wonder why with all the rules in FMLA there wasn’t something for PARENTS to take off time to help their CHILD who had just given birth. That was done traditionally, seems like that would help with PPD as well, also some of these neglect issues. I frequent a medical blog where this researcher is always going on about low NO (nitrous oxide in the tissues), gee, don’t you think having a parent to help feed, bathe, diaper change, clean the house, make sure the lactater gets fed would help? I know Daddy wants to help but like Mommy he came from a small family and never did childcare as a child and is very terrified by the fragile little bundle. My godson’s parents went through it so bad when they had a kid. I wish I could have spent more time helping them now but of course that would have been impossible with my job… their parents lived far away and didn’t assist much either. I did come in right before the baby was born and scrub that place. The preggers one felt so guilty but come on! It’s not like she was capable at that point! Basic stuff. Our society is all blame blame blame. Fuck it, during the early 20th century everybody knew a woman right around birth time needed assistance around the house, unless their were older children (*cough* daughters, very gendered back then) to step in instead. And everybody needs to stop reading these aspirational NYT and magazine/blog articles about people who have help. Yeah, the “help” is not in the photoshoot but they’re there. Supermodels have ribs, too. Shocker, I know.
They discuss miscarriage in the video. They talk about the lack of rituals. Aside from the really scary shit happening with access to medicine (why do you think we have such a horrific maternal mortality rate in the US), emotionally a family that suffers a miscarriage is not given a way to say goodbye. Since it’s treated like a big secret every family is left on their own and at the mercy of the hospital which wants that stem cell tissue. If donating the tissue was a choice, I don’t think people would be so fucking upset about it. It’s almost a hopeful thing coming out of that pain. Instead, it feels like the hospital is trampling on your grief to make a buck and has no respect for the life that was lost.
artem1s
@Emma:
a Catholic health care conglomerate is poised to buy up all the Kaiser HMOs in Ohio. Bet most of their customers have no idea. Bet most of them won’t know it until they are faced with a denial of care because … Jeebus or the pope. Kaiser, the most affordable premiums for individual buyers.
Ohio has officially become a fly over state. Once a leader in science and progressive politics we are now ruled by Luddites from the 1% who want to turn us into Florida and make all of us work as busboys at Bob Evans.
I’d lobby to secede Cleveland to that state up north but they have gotten even crazier than Ohio.
Maybe we can lose the reenactment of the Battle of Lake Erie and become part of Canada?
Another Halocene Human
@pat: They watched too much Star Trek and think it’s real.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Pregnancy#Complications
Another Halocene Human
@artem1s: Wasn’t that all baked in the cake during the “Way to go Ohio” days?
Another Halocene Human
@Kay: This has also got to be an ALEC thing because Rick Scott did exactly the same thing. Nobody paying attention to this issue has been fooled, though.
Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.)
Republicans sure do hate women. And gays. Something clicked with me yesterday, when I read about some Kansas fuckface who wants to bring up a Constitutional amendment up in the House that would outlaw gay marriage. Well, I’ve said for a while now, and onl half-jokingly, that all Republicans are presumptively gay until and unless they can conclusively prove to me that they aren’t.
That explains why they all hate the fags so much: They’re all gay and they’re scared to death that the sexy, sexy, gay, gay men with their gayness and their gay-y-ness and their gayology and their gaystonomy will bring out their inner gayitude.
That much seems more or less self-explanitory, but I think it also ought to tell us something about why they hate women so much. After all, I’m a straight guy, and if I had to marry a agy guy and pretend to love him to fit in socially, I can see how I’d begin to resent that awfully damned quick. I can see how I might even conceivabley begin to hate gay men, and deeply resent their healthy sex lives.
I don’t see any other way to look at these guys than to assume they’re gay. All of them. Normal, healthy, well adjusted people just don’t obsess so about other people’s sex lives, but if you’re all screwed up, then I guess maybe that’s the only thing you’d be thinking of.
Another Halocene Human
@Frankensteinbeck: No, they just don’t care. Have you ever had a debate where you present a fact (or facts plural) that disprove the other person’s argument, and they don’t acknowledge it? They don’t counter-argue, the words just bounce off as if they weren’t heard. I know you have, because you get involved in comments sections on Balloon Juice. That is going on here.
I think sharing real stories is the way to capture the mushy middle. It changed my mind when I was a young person lurking on Usenet. I had been raised with a Pollyannaish Catholic view of life, birth, and death.
As for the committed, psychology tells us the most effective response is, in fact, ridicule. Facts do indeed glance off the addled pate of the determined. Hell, it makes them more determined.
debbie
@Kay:
Perhaps I’m delusional, but I think he’s made a big mistake. His vaunted tax cut for small business (actually averaging $400 to $1,000 per year) will never create the number of jobs he says it will. I’d bet this will be one of the main issues when he goes for reelection.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Today I’m beyond the point of rational discussion on this topic. Fortunately for all involved, I have some time sensitive work to do. Thank you Kay for covering this.
Xenos
@debbie:
This is definitely the next step. At some point in the last couple years the language of the ‘pro-lifers’ shifted to the issue of fertilization. Of course, this would mean that the law would protect the ‘baby’ before it even implants – remember that pregnancy begins with implantation, not conception.
This is setting the foundations for the determination that all medical contraception is legally indistinguishable from abortion, and that women are deemed as pregnant until proved otherwise. The sooner that the public realizes that the outlawing of all contraception is the end-game that the ‘pro-lifers’ are seeking, the sooner this can be stopped.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
I agree with both of your posts.
They are fanatical believers. They believe in a fantasy world, one where their pea brains have decided that they are always right no matter the evidence to the contrary. Facts don’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. Like libertarians believe in a dysfunctional novel as the way of the world, they also believe in a dysfunctional novel as the only truth. This belief has turned into a public health menace, like typhoid or polio.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Emma: More like the Walking Man but yeah, I’m just waiting for him to show up.
JR in WV
Isn’t it a crime to practice medicine without a license? Shouldn’t we put these guys away? Teach them to stick to tasks they’re authorized and capable to do, like patty-cake? Somfing? anything to get them out of public life, which they have shown they are unable to cope with!
Frankensteinbeck
@Another Halocene Human:
This is absolutely true. While these positions are being pushed by the unconvincable, and while it is important to understand that your opponent may not be operating on logic at all, it is even more important to try to convince every single person we can. Especially since very few people are absolutes, and some (like John) may be shocked by some visceral outrage at any moment into a willingness to listen.
JR in WV
@Zapruder F. Mashtots, D.D.S. (Mumphrey, et al.):
This!
Explains their hatred for women’s health issues, their dislike of gays of any sexual preference, their tendency to protect each other from being punished for criminal sexual behavior, the whole ball of evangeo-catholic mental illness.
Now, how do we explain the women they pull along into their perverted fantasies? Just the cultural background of submission and domination that forces women in that culture to go along with whatever their husband decides?
My aunt had an ectopic pregnancy back in the 1950s, and everyone thought it was a miracle when she actually carried a child to term. Of course, nowadays they might not be allowed to do the surgery to repair the faulty non-pregnancy, so she would die, and I would have no cousin!
Ms. D. Ranged in AZ
Wait…..why would they specify pre-eclampsia and not eclampsia itself, which is what follows and is the more dangerous condition?! Effin stupid.
gypsy howell
It’s not that difficult to figure out how this very specific list of conditions was derived. They obviously surveyed all the republican (men) and only included on the list conditions that had actually affected their wives, sisters or daughters.
Because as you know, until it happens to a Republican personally, it doesn’t matter. So, we can assume that none of them have had an ectopic pregnancy situation, nor eclampsia, nor any of the other life-threatening conditions which have been left off the list.
burnspbesq
I love the smell of TROs in the morning. It smells like sanity.
Longer term, needless to say, the answer is to get these Neanderthals out of office.
Diana
@Frankensteinbeck: Amen.
Tokyokie
@Xenos: I’m fond of asking opponents of abortion who consider it infanticide whether they celebrate their days of conception or their days of implantation rather than their birthdays, and point out that if they don’t, then they bloody well recognize the distinction that abortion-rights supporters (and the law) make as well. That nobody can actually accurately determine the point of conception or implantation makes declaring life to begin at that point all the more meaningless.
Oh yeah, and the American Medical Association and the College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (or their local affiliates) regularly weigh in against measures like the ones in Texas and Ohio. Just not very loudly. Especially the AMA.
swbarnes2
@pat:
A few months ago, we started noticing that our TV was taking a few seconds to turn on. Then it was closer to half a minute, or a minute, with lots of clicking before it finally engaged. What is was was that the capacitors needed to turn the thing on were dying, so it was struggling to get enough juice to turn on. We kept using it, and eventually, so many capacitors fried that it would not turn on. But it’s a TV. It’s function is to be used. I was totally within my rights to watch TV until it died. I could have stopped using that TV, in order to maintain its theoretical functionality. But why would I do that?
These people think women should be treated the way I treated my TV. What’s the use of an incubator if you interrupt its incubating function?
Michael
As a (temporary) Ohioan, this is all incredibly terrifying. When was all of this included in the budget? For months NPR has been talking about the changes in coin laundry taxes in the new budget, but I heard nothing about new abortion and contraception limitations.
Where is the best place to donate to work against these laws? PP obviously needs funding to stay afloat and provide all of the good they do, but where will have the best political punch?
Ruckus
@Tokyokie:
Especially the AMA.
A lot of their members are old white men. And looking at some of the conservatives who write and believe this crap and finding they are Dr, some being OBGYN. They should know better. I wonder if their practices have not been all that successful when they treat women like shit and the women find another Dr and that’s why they ran for office. Maybe they got laughed at around the water cooler by their fellow Dr for being ignorant fucks.
Stephanie
@aimai: you said it all