[Erin] Abortion and the right to know
Saturday June 21, 2008
Categories: Culture
A California woman has been charged with posing as a doctor for the purpose of performing abortions: Bertha Pinedo Bugarin, 48, was arrested Thursday after a yearlong investigation, San Diego County district attorney spokesman Paul Levikow said. She was charged...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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"I have a hard time imagining that someone could this easily, for instance, pass himself or herself off as a dentist or a plastic surgeon without being caught almost at once, not getting away with this activity for at least a year and at multiple locations."
Wrong. Happens all the time. Just look up some of the stories involving fake plastic surgeons in particular. Priscilla Presley was just famously in such a situation involving a guy who was injecting her and other Hollywood people with what was essentially car lubricant. This isn't something unique to abortion providers, despite the desires of those who want to hype it as such.
Mark is right. Any competent nurse or PA could pass for an MD for a while. Some would probably be better.
Steve
Something similar happened in the South with notaries in Hispanic neighborhoods offering legal services and representing themselves as lawyers.
Our infrastructure is stretched to thin and many critical public services including inspections of food, health, and other code services suffer.
Medical and nursing boards routinely publish photos and information of impostors who have successfully tricked medical institutions into hiring them.
Abortions should not be performed in free standing clinics but in all hospitals that receive state or federal funding. The standards that Feminists for Life are asking for are already required by JHACO, except possibly the responsibility of the father part.
It was wrong that she misrepresented herself, but I think this comes under the issue of medicine wishing to keep so much control with itself. There is no good reason either that midwives cannot deliver babies in some areas, or are placed under so many restrictions, and why cannot a woman provide the service of abortion to other women unless she has jumped through all the hoops of the physicians' monopoly? It is largely about money and power.
Mark in Houston, Zoetius, don't spoil the rhetoric with facts
**As with any other medical procedure, women have a right to full disclosure of the nature of the abortion procedure, risks and potential complications and alternative support services, as well as the father's responsibility.**
Ah, but who gets to decide the wording? Doctors or ultra-conservative legislators?
"Right to know" or proselytizing? There's the rub.
(And if Erin or Rod, given their beliefs, actually thought "right to know" would INCREASE the number of abortions, they would never support it in a million years, "pro-woman" or not.)
"(And if Erin or Rod, given their beliefs, actually thought "right to know" would INCREASE the number of abortions, they would never support it in a million years, "pro-woman" or not.)"
As I'm sure the exact opposite would hold true in your case.
Although we'll never have to worry about that, because whenever the same standards of disclosure are applied to abortion as are applied to other medical procedures, the responses are quite predictable, now or a million years from now. I wonder why that might be.
What a maroon! If a "right to know" increased the number of abortions, that would mean it was a morally defensible act. It ain't!
The women who have them certainly consider it to be morally defensable, assuming of course that they even care if it is or not.
People do have the right not to give a damn.
People do have the right not to give a damn. Adults who have sex with children consider it morally defensible. So what.
It's not an issue of providing information. These "right to know" laws, coupled with mandatory waiting periods (and one should always consider them in conjunction), are intended to make it harder for women to procure abortions. In many cases, particularly in states where there are few abortion providers and women have to travel long distances to get to abortion providers, right to know laws and waiting periods cause some women to be unable to get abortions, because they aren't in a position to come back after the initial visit, because of their jobs, their ability to afford the wait, etc. Which is the point, after all. It's not a matter of providing information and time to process it, it's a matter of trying to put up roadblocks to prevent unfettered access to abortion. And let's not get into the whole paternalistic aspect of treating women like they need the government to hold their hand with regard to making these decisions.
Also, to those who say that pro-choice people oppose these rules because they may lead to fewer abortions, you have it wrong. Being pro-choice means supporting a women's choice to have an abortion. The problem is that these rules may lead to fewer abortions for the reasons I cite above, not because they cause women to change their minds. The latter is fine. We're the side that respects women and their autonomy, after all.
"Adults who have sex with children consider it morally defensible. So what."
Bloody breeders.
"We're the side that respects women and their autonomy, after all."
BS. Naomi Wolf exposed that lie a decade ago:
http://www.priestsforlife.org/prochoice/ourbodiesoursouls.htm
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