You know that reproductive health care crisis the left keeps crowing about? That women’s rights are being threatened — namely the right to end any life she created? Well, in Idaho, women are facing a genuine reproductive health care problem: woke doctors.
After the Dobbs decision, the Idaho state Legislature made all abortions illegal, unless pregnancy threatens the woman’s life. Now OB-GYN doctors are in open revolt against the law. They insist that abortions must be a legal alternative, not just for the life of the woman, but for her health as well.
These devoted care providers aren’t lobbying for legislative changes, nor are they spending their weekends educating the public on the issues. They are quitting their jobs and moving to more “enlightened” states. According to CBS News, over 50 percent of physicians specializing in high-risk pregnancies will have left Idaho by the end of the year.
These doctors want us to trust their judgment as it pertains to women’s health, and if we refuse their demand, they won’t do anything for women’s health. They’ll just take their ball medical bag and leave. I’d like to know: does dumping their patients who need them the most square with their hypocritic oath — sorry, Hippocratic Oath?
But, there’s a problem with asking us to trust their judgment. The entire medical profession has spent years discrediting itself, and showing no willingness to hold its practitioners accountable for professional ethics. Confidence in the industry has been in sharp decline in recent years. Gallup now reports that almost two thirds of Americans lack confidence in our medical institutions. Is anybody in the industry asking how that happened or what the industry should do about it?
When the entire medical industry came out in support of Obamacare, it pierced the institution’s bubble of professionalism. We knew that the legislation was ill advised. When doctors and hospitals supported it, we realized that their judgment was not infallible. We started paying attention.
In more recent years, medical professionals have put their wokeness on public display. Take the example of Dr. Bandy Lee, a Yale-affiliated psychiatrist. After watching Donald Trump on TV, she called a group of her fellow medical professionals together to work up a mental diagnosis of The Donald. They decided that he is dangerously mentally unstable and publicly released their diagnosis — committing two ethical violations in the process. She said her duty to inform the public superseded her oath. Somehow it never occurred to her that her impression of Trump may have been a bit flawed, given the one-sided coverage of the MSM. Yet she insisted that the public should trust her judgment, even writing a book about Trump’s mental state.
Was Dr. Lee subjected to a formal ethics review, or in any way hindered from practicing? Nope. She was not held accountable in any meaningful way. That was when some of us realized that the profession does not police itself. We must scrutinize it.
We have also just experienced three years of COVID medical hysteria. Mask up responsibly — even though masks don’t work. Every responsible citizen must get the vaccine — that doesn’t prevent the illness. If you don’t get the vax, you’re risking the lives of those who did. And be sure to get a booster every six months. It doesn’t prevent the illness, either, but it does increase Dr. Fauci’s royalty checks. It’s all very confidence-inspiring.
While all that nonsense was going on, we were told that the vax was perfectly safe, even though they did very little testing, and most of us have some anecdote to the contrary.
Speaking of anecdotes, let me tell you my story. I acquired persistent Afib after receiving the vax. My cardiologist recommended a COVID booster and a surgical procedure. I said yes to the procedure and no to the booster — much to his chagrin. While recuperating in the hospital, I overheard two of my nurses talking outside my room. One stated that her boss, my doctor, told her that if she gets a COVID booster, she may get Afib also, as the shot causes swelling of the heart. After I returned home from my surgery, I was informed by my doctor’s office that he was leaving the practice and wouldn’t be available for my post-surgical care. So my doctor was recommending a medication for me that he wouldn’t recommend for his staff, and talked me into a surgery when he knew he wouldn’t be available to make sure it was successful. Yet I am to trust that my health is his foremost concern?
So what might happen if we trust the protesting reproductive health care physicians? They say their only concern is a woman’s health. Is there any chance their concern is based on the Turnaway Study? It was done by University of Michigan economist Sarah Miller, University of California at San Francisco demographer Diana Greene Foster and New York University economist Laura Wherry. The study concluded that the financial health of women denied abortions is negatively and significantly impacted.
But the authors of the study didn’t stop at financial hardships. As Foster said:
The biggest differences we saw, besides the socioeconomic differences, are in physical health. That’s consistent with the medical literature that shows that carrying a pregnancy to term — the many months of continued pregnancy and childbirth — are associated with much greater risk than having an abortion, even a later abortion.
Let me translate. Pregnancy threatens a woman’s health, because it’s hard on her body. Who knew?
The American Psychological Association also entered the debate. It issued an opinion that restricting abortion will likely lead to mental health harms. It stated:
Research shows people who are denied abortions are more likely to experience higher levels of anxiety, lower life satisfaction, and lower self-esteem compared with those who are able to obtain abortions.
If our protesting doctors were given the authority to use their judgment to decide when an abortion for a woman’s health is warranted, would they be inclined to reach that conclusion for a woman’s
If they were granted the authority to use their judgment, would the “scientific” conclusions stated above give doctors a license to justify all abortion requests? Or would they stand firm that the above is not what the public meant by a “health of the mother” exception? What has their profession done to make us trust them to do the latter rather than the former?
Our institutions require credibility to be effective. When they squander their credibility, social order suffers. The media squandered their credibility for the narrative (preferred propaganda). Law enforcement promised equal protection under the law but delivered political persecution. The Intelligence Community demanded our trust and then surveilled us rather than our foreign enemies. Now the medical industry is following other institutions down the same destructive path, of placing ideology above ethics. Canons of ethical behavior, and the oaths sworn by practitioners, have become meaningless.
The doctors fleeing Idaho are living the consequences of their profession having ignored its ethical standards and squandering our trust. And it’s all on them.
John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho. He is a staff writer for the American Free News Network and can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.
Image: Pkd2016 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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