this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
709 points (99.2% liked)

News

22802 readers
4578 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

One woman miscarried in the restroom lobby of a Texas emergency room as front desk staff refused to admit her. Another woman learned that her fetus had no heartbeat at a Florida hospital, the day after a security guard turned her away from the facility. And in North Carolina, a woman gave birth in a car after an emergency room couldn’t offer an ultrasound. The baby later died.

The cases raise alarms about the state of emergency pregnancy care in the U.S., especially in states that enacted strict abortion laws and sparked confusion around the treatment doctors can provide.

“It is shocking, it’s absolutely shocking,” said Amelia Huntsberger, an OB/GYN in Oregon. “It is appalling that someone would show up to an emergency room and not receive care -- this is inconceivable.”

It’s happened despite federal mandates that the women be treated.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Drivebyhaiku 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It's a major issue with laws when they intermingle with medical practice. Laws are kind of like bad computer code. It is written with an intention but that intention is only as good as how good your technical ability to write the code is which also hinges on understanding what all the potentially the factors at play are. Particularly when your law has particularly harsh penalties for misconduct.

Human bodies are complicated and a lot of law regarding operates in the space of "potential". In a court of law in things like self defense cases where you have to defend your actions from persecution by the code have to prove you had no other "potential" avenues to take because if it can be proven you had other choices or there is a chance however small that you overreacted and things theoretically could have turned out fine the law swoops in and leaves you open to prosecution.

But medical stuff is complicated and nuanced in ways the law is not. Law is a rigid computer code. If you have a situation leaves an opening in the law for "cases that are life threatening." and someone does the thing they then leave themselves open to the potential of having to prove that every single other option was exhausted. If someone is stable and not in immediate distress... Even though you know they will be later given predictable odds it becomes a nightmare of leaving more doubt so one tactic is to just wait until things are life threatening... But the problem with life threatening cases is they hold extra damages and risks. If your life is in danger your organs are failing. There is no question the house is burning down when the flames burst through the windows but if you wanted to mitigate the damages putting it out when the candle first tipped over has the best long term results ...

Say a law stipulates that it's only permissible to help in the event the house is "burning down". This means you have to agree in a court room that your definition of "burning down" is in fact a reasonable interpretation of that specific language. One tactic to be safe is you wait until nobody can argue the state of the house. Would you say a little spot of your carpet being on fire is the house "burning down"? It's not good sure but isn't that hyperbole? What constitutes "burning down" anyway? So your carpet burning isn't the house burning down and there's no provision for the the drapes and furniture, or an oil or oven fire... Those are all not causing damage directly to the structure of the house so the house isn't even burning much less "down"... But if you wait the house will catch fire... But is it "burning down"? It's when the structure of your house is in danger of collapsing right? Down still implies a fire where the house is pretty advanced and there isn't much left afterwards right? At what point is the house actually "burning down"? When the structure catches probably isn't burning "down" is it when 25% of the structure ia compromised? If you put out the fire then the house wouldn't be "down" would it? Still a lot of house that is in fact "up". Well 50% is probably a good call right? Oh but then it's only " in imminent danger of burning down" not actively "burning down" ...

Laws like anti abortion laws tend to be created to be big and showy and easy for lay people to read because they are essentially political showboating. Every place with a total abortion ban has shown to be terrible for women's healthcare in exactly this way and none of this outcome was a surprise to the people fighting to keep abortion legal.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Thanks! Your reply is what finally made me fully "get it".

The states mention in the article say that you can only abort if the mother's health is in danger, or in the cases of rape and incest. If you're treating a pregnant woman and she's in critical condition, you might be faced with having to do an abortion. If you do it, the courts might say the woman wasn't in enough danger. If you don't, the courts might say you caused the patient's death.

Where I live, abortion is 100% banned (hooray for Catholicism). In some other comments in this chain, I asked why that might now happen here.

This is why. To hell if your house is burning, you are not allowed to put it out. Therefore this choice doesn't happen and the gynecologists just do their job, or at least try to.