RvW Overturned - Abortions Now Illegal

[Res Ipsa]

This is a longstanding issue with pharmacists. Here's an opinion in a Wisconsin case in which a pharmacist refused to refill a birth control prescription for a 16 year old girl, refused to transfer the prescription to a different pharmacist, and refused to tell the girl what her options were to get the prescription filled by someone else. It's worth reading the entire opinion to see how smug this pharmacist was.

One of my best friends once told me that his brother, who worked at drug store (I'm not sure whether he was a pharmacist or just a clerk), who had religious objections to contraception, took upon himself the moral obligation to pierce all packages of condoms with a needle before putting them on the shelf to insure their effectiveness would be compromised.

Unlike the conscience cases mentioned above, that's likely a crime. Religious conviction does not permit one to commit crimes.

[canpakes]

I refuse to believe people care this much about other people's kids they'll never meet. To say so is to be completely full of crap.

This is not about kid's lives. It's about power/control over living people you don't even know.

Frankly, it's a kind of rape. That's why Kavanaugh is all for it.

I’m not so sure that they ‘care about kids’ as much as care about the idea of kids.

I’d think that if the care was directed more towards actual born kids, then more of these folks wouldn’t fall on the side of the political fence where they are dead-set against state or federal assistance funding for day care and pre-school, or family leave funding.

[Some Schmo]

I’m not so sure that they ‘care about kids’ as much as care about the idea of kids.

I’d think that if the care was directed more towards actual born kids, then more of these folks wouldn’t fall on the side of the political fence where they are dead-set against state or federal assistance funding for day care and pre-school, or family leave funding.

No doubt about it. That's why I say they are imagining an idealized, healthy, perfectly formed baby with parents who can't wait to have it, and not considering the brutal reality of babies for most people.

It's clear to me that if you call yourself "pro-life" that you haven't really thought the issue through. You stopped at, "aww... it could grow into a cute little baby."

If you have thought it through and still think abortion should be illegal, then you're a control freak and unreasonable/irrational person who shouldn't be taken seriously anyway.

[Binger]

I’m not so sure that they ‘care about kids’ as much as care about the idea of kids.

I’d think that if the care was directed more towards actual born kids, then more of these folks wouldn’t fall on the side of the political fence where they are dead-set against state or federal assistance funding for day care and pre-school, or family leave funding.

No doubt about it. That's why I say they are imagining an idealized, healthy, perfectly formed baby with parents who can't wait to have it, and not considering the brutal reality of babies for most people.

It's clear to me that if you call yourself "pro-life" that you haven't really thought the issue through. You stopped at, "aww... it could grow into a cute little baby."

If you have thought it through and still think abortion should be illegal, then you're a control freak and unreasonable/irrational person who shouldn't be taken seriously anyway.

What about people who think that abortion should be legal and also think the states should be able to make that happen?

[canpakes]

What about people who think that abortion should be legal and also think the states should be able to make that happen?

What about people who think that abortion should be illegal and also think the states should be able to make that happen?

[Res Ipsa]

This pre-Dobbs article from the New England Journal of Medicine was, sadly, prescient:

Some Texas clinicians still provide abortion counseling and referrals, believing that the law does not limit their free speech, while also noting that such freedom depends on a clinician’s willingness to assume possible legal risk. On the basis of legal guidance, other Texas clinicians believe they are not even allowed to counsel patients regarding the availability of abortion in cases of increased maternal risks or poor fetal prognosis, although before SB8 they would have done so. Many clinicians have also been advised that they cannot provide information about out-of-state abortion facilities or directly contact out-of-state clinicians to transfer patient information. These fears have disrupted continuity of care and left patients to find services on their own.

Many patients we interviewed described feeling hurt and confused when they learned their condition was not exempt from SB8 and they could not receive care in their home state. After receiving fetal diagnoses of spina bifida and trisomy 18, a 39-year-old woman was shocked that her physician would not even inform her about termination options. She said, “When you already have received news like that and can barely function, the thought of then having to do your own investigating to determine where to get this medical care and to arrange going out of state feels additionally overwhelming.”
Clinicians we interviewed recounted a variety of circumstances in which a patient could have received hospital-based abortion care before SB8 but was now denied that care. Patients with a life-limiting fetal diagnosis, such as anencephaly or bilateral renal agenesis, are only being counseled to continue their pregnancy and offered neonatal comfort care options after delivery. All hospitals where our respondents practiced have prohibited multifetal reduction, even though in some cases (e.g., complications of monochorionic twins) failure to perform the procedure could result in the loss of both twins.
Patients with pregnancy complications or preexisting medical conditions that may be exacerbated by pregnancy are being forced to delay an abortion until their conditions become life-threatening and qualify as medical emergencies, or until fetal cardiac activity is no longer detectable. An MFM specialist reported that their hospital no longer offers treatment for ectopic pregnancies implanted in cesarean scars, despite strong recommendations from the Society for Maternal–Fetal Medicine that these life-threatening pregnancies be definitively managed with surgical or medical treatment.4 Some clinicians believe that patients with rupture of membranes before fetal viability are eligible for a medical exemption under SB8, while others believe these patients cannot receive an abortion so long as there is fetal cardiac activity. In multiple cases, the treating clinicians — believing, on the basis of their own or their hospital’s interpretation of the law, that they could not provide early intervention — sent patients home, only to see them return with signs of sepsis. An obstetrician–gynecologist recalled only one patient who was able to obtain an abortion at their hospital under SB8’s maternal health exemption, because her severe cardiac condition had progressed to the point that she was admitted to the intensive care unit. As an MFM specialist summarized, “People have to be on death’s door to qualify for maternal exemptions to SB8.”

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2207423

[Morley]

If you have thought it through and still think abortion should be illegal, then you're a control freak and unreasonable/irrational person who shouldn't be taken seriously anyway.

What about people who think that abortion should be legal and also think the states should be able to make that happen?

If you think the states should be able to make that happen, then you must also believe that the states should be allowed to prevent it from happening.

To clarity: You think a woman should be have the right to control her own reproductive system. But you also think that the state should be allowed to take away that right.

I can’t tell if you’re making a serious argument here or if you’re just dicking around.

[Binger]

If you have thought it through and still think abortion should be illegal, then you're a control freak and unreasonable/irrational person who shouldn't be taken seriously anyway.

What about people who think that abortion should be legal and also think the states should be able to make that happen?

If you think the states should be able to make that happen, then you must also believe that the states should be allowed to prevent it from happening.

To clarity: You think a woman should be have the right to control her own reproductive system. But you also think that the state should be allowed to take away that right.

Are you making a serious argument here or are you just dicking around?

No argument. Just a question. And you can't possibly be serious where you state, as a point of clarity, what "[ I] think." You are very wrong.
Your if>then statement is also flawed.

[canpakes]

What about people who think that abortion should be legal and also think the states should be able to make that happen?

If you think the states should be able to make that happen, then you must also believe that the states should be allowed to prevent it from happening.

To clarity: You think a woman should be have the right to control her own reproductive system. But you also think that the state should be allowed to take away that right.

I can’t tell if you’re making a serious argument here or if you’re just dicking around.

You’re closer with your second option, in my opinion. The question regarding ‘if the States…’ becomes a distraction as that’s not what the main debate is about.

[Gunnar]

Patients Experiencing Miscarriages Denied Necessary Medication.

Some patients in Texas who have been miscarrying have reported that pharmacies are denying them medication, out of fear they will use the prescription for an abortion. Dr. Lauren Thaxton, an OB-GYN out of Texas, joins Katie Phang to discuss. » Subscribe to MSNBC:

One unintended yet almost inevitable consequence of the overturning of RvW and the extreme anti-abortion legislation now being enacted by many states as a result, is jeopardizing the health and sometimes the very lives of women who have unintended, spontaneous miscarriages, which occur in at least 10% and up to 40% of all pregnancies, because doctors will be forbidden to prescribe the very drugs needed to treat the victims of such spontaneous miscarriages. Thus, women experiencing such undesired miscarriages, in addition to the sorrow and trauma of losing a wanted pregnancy, are now subjected to potentially health and, in some cases, even life-threatening situations because the drugs needed to treat them are banned.

Does anyone here fail to see the utter stupidity and injustice and inherent cruelty of this situation? This is in addition to the very real possibility that women who experience such unwanted miscarriages and their doctors will automatically, in some states, be unjustly investigated and sometimes even prosecuted for having caused the termination of the pregnancy!