In Texas, where doctors face up to 99 years of prison if convicted of performing an illegal abortion, medical and legal experts say the law is complicating decision-making around emergency pregnancy care.
Although the state law says termination of ectopic pregnancies is not considered abortion, the draconian penalties scare Texas doctors from treating those patients,
Removed by mod
Alternatively, we could not have laws that jail doctors from doing the right thing.
The real coward’s choice would be to simply leave the state. These laws are absolutely draconian and awful and there are no good choices.
deleted by creator
That’s not cowardice, it’s pragmatism.
Honestly we should have a constitutional amendment that “congress nor the states shall make no law to prevent people from obtaining a medical procedure if they cannot show it is worse than not undergoing the procedure for the person seeking care.” This would also pre-empt trans healthcare bans, as a plus.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Uh, ok.
So, is this you saying that you will put your freedom and your family at risk to help someone?
To be clear, I am a third year medical student that wants to go into emergency medicine, and I’m already looking for ways to challenge this kind of bullshit to protect my patients. Thankfully, I live in a state that has actually set itself up as a refuge for reproductive healthcare (Minnesota), but I’d just get more creative about it if I lived somewhere else.
I’ll put my money where my mouth is…would you? I want an actual, honest answer that takes your own life and situation into consideration.
Why haven’t you flown down there to help? Because you’re a coward?
It’s the trolley problem made manifest. Help one person and possibly kill a dozen others, or let one person probably die so that you can possibly help more.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t, and regardless of which you choose, you’re the monster. This is exactly what Republicans want. Either these doctors risk everything to save these women, or they try to help everybody else and get hate from people like you. That anger would be better spent on the people who put these laws into place and the people who voted for them and support these draconian laws.
What oath? The hippocratic oath? The unenforced and unenforceable oath that’s actually meaningless?
If it’s meaningless to you, I understand your willingness to kowtow to fascists and their policies.
deleted by creator
I mean, I get it, but you know as well as I am that they are going to keep slicing the salami. How many women are you willing to let die, to make die, before you say enough?
I’ve never had to think less about blocking someone.
Cowardly to protect more lives by remaining a doctor? Cowardly to not throw his life into chaos to help people who statistically probably voted for this new paradigm or didn’t bother voting at all? How about primary elections where turnout is 10%? He’s supposed to martyr his life to help Idiocracy win? Decades of top scores and academic rigor should be eager to die?
No. I don’t think doctors are the cowards here. I think this is the situation that people voted for. This is where apathy has taken us.
You do realize that the traditional Hippocratic and Osteopathic oaths forbid abortions, right? A lot of physicians adhere to more modern versions, but if you’re going by the traditional Hippocratic oath, you’re just talking out your ass about something you don’t actually understand the context and consequences of.
Edit: It appears that I should clarify some things. I do not agree with the original Hippocratic or Osteopathic oaths. I refuse to take them, and have instead written my own for myself and my firmly held beliefs. Abortion and euthanasia are expressly forbidden by the original oaths, and there are still quite a few physicians that point to those oaths to excuse themselves from violating conservative religious beliefs on those topics. I support the right to abortions, and the right to die with dignity. It’s still important to recognize that the original oaths that many physicians (old and new) ascribe to forbid these, and that they will use those oaths as an excuse to violate patients’ rights in favor of their own beliefs.