Can someone tell me why methotrexate is a good option for an ectopic pregnancy? I’ve read that it interferes with cell growth, but does it work quickly enough in an emergency? And wouldn’t the embryo also need to be surgically removed?
I was sure that this was in a rural area or farther south as I grew up in Southern Illinois. WTF, this happened in the outer Chicago area. There really needs to be actions by the state that these hospitals lose the ability to take public payments or something if they do not provide help during a possibly life-ending emergency.
Why can’t we establish a fund to help sue these national systems? Think it’s critical to meet these organizations with the same degree of purpose that they have. Hate that we seem to be playing defense all the time.
I don’t see how there can possibly be even a 1% chance of an ectopic pregnancy succeeding. Even if the tube weren’t going to rupture and kill the mother from the fetus growing, to the best of my understanding, the fetus wouldn’t be attached to a placenta or protected by an amniotic sac because those are uterine structures.
I am long time health care executive. The government may not be tracking all the data but I bet that EPIC knows what is happening in 75% of all the hospitals. In addition, most of the pro baby. ER docs would probably be happy to post on their profiles there stance on it (or at a minimum list the legal procedures they will. Maybe doximity, health grades or some of those services might run a test to see if OBs and ED docs would update their preferences to make it known don't come to them or do come to them.
Too bad there are not any smart people who can read medical literature in the entire GOP. Choose your Drs and representatives wisely. lives depend on it.
Senator Collins here in Maine, a Catholic by the way (not that it's relevant?? 🥸), has refused to support the Women's Health Protection Act, calling it "extreme" because it doesn't allow for "conscience" protections. Harmonie's story -- that's "conscience" in action. "Do a Google, die for all I care -- but don't expect me to save your life by performing a simple life-saving procedure." Frig this shite. And this religion. Thank you, JV!!
RE: Maine — it sounds like Graham Platner is the most popular, and yet he still hasn’t said he’ll support and defend abortion rights in Maine. He’s conveniently avoided the entire topic, and his website is vague in that he defends the right to choose. I think people are finally starting to notice, but wondering whether Mainers already picked up on it / whether he’ll finally commit to protecting the right to abortion / telehealth / shield laws etc ?
I hope you all vote her out soon. I’m cheering you on from over here. Also, we should get rid of “conscience protection laws” for good. A medical professional who refuses to DO THEIR JOB should be fired. We’ve allowed this circus of religious extremism within healthcare to go on far too long.
I agree with your idea of creating a list of doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc. who won’t provide abortion care or medicine related to contraception and abortion. I have thought the same thing about businesses that won’t cater to gay people (won’t bake the cake or plan the wedding). Because we have a supreme court who only represents and protects straight white Christians, I have thought that there should be some kind of class action suit to require those businesses to identify as operating according to religious beliefs. Some sort of decal in the window or website- people have a right to not feel humiliated and distressed by being refused care or denied access to a business. Most people that I know wouldn’t choose to use the services- medical or business, of people holding religious views that denigrate them. It would be great for CPC’s to have to identify as ant-abortion.
Every time any one tries to regulate the crisis pregnancy centers, they sue. And because they seem to have unlimited funds… they just keep suing until they win. It’s usually the extremist legal group ADF (alliance defending freedom) supporting the plaintiffs, or aiding the Republican state governments (because not only do republican states NOT regulate CPC’s, they also fund them, with taxpayer money). The Supreme Court is hearing a case about NJ crisis pregnancy centers on Dec 2. The CPC in question, First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, is a faith based center that falsely advertises to women seeking to end unplanned pregnancies, and also offers the abortion reversal pill - just a few of the reasons why the state of NJ sought information under consumer fraud and protection laws etc. Literally, NJ only attempted to get information from the CPC, and the CPC immediately sued. And because of its obviously prolife viewpoints, the CPC managed to completely reframe the question as a free speech issue.
Sorry this is so long, I can go on forever about their legal strategies and propaganda 😫 I wish more doctors WOULD recognize the harm that CPC’s do, and come out against them. It seems like doctors stopped filing amici curiae briefs in these cases, tbh.
Just have to vent on AED's first item before I can even read the rest of the newsletter. How can the doctor Harmonie first saw not be sued for malpractice and not have her licence removed???Not only was there the very real possiblility of Harmonie's tube bursting followed by sepsis but she was not only endangering her patient's life but her fertility since she'd already lost a tube to a previous ectopic. Do Catholic hospitals have their very own review boards, not answerable to state medical review boards? LIke the impenetrability of pedophilia within the church for so long? And this is the math that determines whether a woman will live or die, a 1% chance that her pregnancy might succeed? I feel helpless before the times we live in.
Spot on. I keep thinking that in truth an ectopic pregnancy has a 0% chance of succeeding. It’s like the 1% she spoke of gives her (the OBGYN) an excuse to deny care in Harmonie’s serious health emergency. How is this remotely ethical physician behavior?
I can well understand that many people are urging Harmonie to sue, but they may not know how hard it would be for her to go up against a whole hospital system. Denial of reproductive healthcare, even if flouting of the law and medical standards is easily proven and the risk and trauma inflicted is unconscionable, doesn't seem to be a type of case (like surgical malpractice or auto accident) that attorneys readily take on a contingency basis. Sometimes you do see targets of outrageous political victimization, like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, getting through a long and wearing legal process and achieving a measure of justice, and you have to figure that their high-profile law firm acted pro bono or could afford to wait years for a contingency fee; and some NGOs like the ACLU and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation are in the business of representing clients for free who stand for important principles. Pro bono representation was in fact how the Roe v. Wade case could be brought in the first place; the complainant could never have afforded it. But these days there seems to be an allergy to ranking reproductive rights as high as they deserve and extending proportionate help through the legal system. I don't blame specialized law firms and NGOs that are fighting to keep reproductive healthcare available; they must be pushed to capacity and beyond just doing that. I do blame the powerhouse legal establishment, which is either playing it safe (fearing political retaliation, or pandering to powerful interests intent on selling women out) or simply doesn't classify a women's issue, no matter how existential, as important. If we want this to change, we have to apply pressure. Why not flood, say, the Legal AF network with demands that the smug lawyer-journalists get their heads out of their asses and start to cover what the Trump regime's assault on the rule of law means to women? If they discussed THIS legal outrage for a few minutes - an innocent woman brushed off and put at high risk of infertility or death by an anti-abortion cult fanatic empowered as a healthcare provider; and not that clown James Comey who's going to walk away whistling from a prosecution by the tyrant he helped install - then the news would spread more quickly and widely, and Harmonie might land a good volunteer lawyer on the usual rationale: winning such a case for such a client is fantastic advertising for an ambitious firm. In the end, it's a matter of what WE demonstrate we care about.
"I do blame the powerhouse legal establishment, which is ... or simply doesn't classify a women's issue, no matter how existential, as important."
That's an interesting angle. It's popular to characterize anti-abortionists as misogynist. But that suggests they care about women somehow in some important way. But it really is probably more the problem that they don't see women as being important at all and their complaints as just getting in the way of higher purposes. To them, feminism is ironic, a feeble gesture of no real cause or reason. They are more interested in putting women in their place, which is to say, no place in particular beyond bearing children and the associated labor of raising them and maintaining a home.
This administration and the sadistic (Catholic) SCOTUS 6 don’t care about EMTALA. In fact, I’m pretty sure they are working to get the perfect abortion case in front of them ASAP. Alito zeroed in on the language of EMTALA during the last court case. I’m no lawyer, but do understand when the EMTALA law was established, conservatives included wording about stabilizing the “unborn child” as well. Yes, that was during Regan times and you better believe they’ve been planning for this moment ever since.
We have an Ascension hospital here in the Baltimore area and a few clearly affiliated Catholic hospitals in the Baltimore/Washington area. It is criminal that they can operate as healthcare facilities and then deny lifesaving care and procedures to women when they need them under the guise of what? Religious exemption? EMTALA requires emergency treatment. I do hope she sues this physician and facility.
Nearly 40 years ago I raced my wife to the emergency room for what turned out to have been an ectopic pregnancy. From the time we hit the ER until she was under anesthesia in the OR was less than 15 minutes. The surgeon later told me that if we'd been delayed another 10 minutes she would have died. Had the ER resident physician felt he had to call an attending, she would have died. Had the surgeon felt he needed to call the hospital attorney, she would have died. Had we lived in Texas or Louisiana or other abortion ban states today, she would have died. I wrote my monograph "Prohibition 2.0: The Ghosts of Prohibition Haunting the Anti-Abortion Crusade" because abortion bans are the cutting edge of the autocratic sword. But for me this is more than an academic exercise - it is deeply personal.
The monograph is as-of-yet unpublished but key sections will be included in my forthcoming book Trumpianity. The current manuscript (PDF) can be viewed and/or downloaded at https://www.trumpianity.us/. Section IV, Why Abortion Bans are the Cruel Cutting Edge of the Autocratic Sword, is pages 91-96. Comments welcome!
The monograph is as-of-yet unpublished but key sections will be included in my forthcoming book Trumpianity. The current manuscript (PDF) can be viewed and/or downloaded at https://www.trumpianity.us/. Section IV, Why Abortion Bans are the Cruel Cutting Edge of the Autocratic Sword, is pages 91-96. Comments welcome! Thanks.
PS: with regards to Substack I am a tech troglodyte still trying to figure out how to make it work ;-)
You got a Substack. The best way to learn this stuff is to just jump in. Notice that you can put up a bunch of stuff and just leave it in drafts. You don't actually have to publish it, which is to say, you don't have to actually put it on line to see how this stuff works. And you can preview it before publishing as well.
I've retired now but when I worked with healthcare leaders I would share the mantra Proceed Until Apprehended (Florence Nightingale's attitude about getting stuff done). I guess I need to take my own advice. Thanks!
this OBGYN needs to have her license removed. she is not safe to be practically medicine
Can someone tell me why methotrexate is a good option for an ectopic pregnancy? I’ve read that it interferes with cell growth, but does it work quickly enough in an emergency? And wouldn’t the embryo also need to be surgically removed?
I was sure that this was in a rural area or farther south as I grew up in Southern Illinois. WTF, this happened in the outer Chicago area. There really needs to be actions by the state that these hospitals lose the ability to take public payments or something if they do not provide help during a possibly life-ending emergency.
Why can’t we establish a fund to help sue these national systems? Think it’s critical to meet these organizations with the same degree of purpose that they have. Hate that we seem to be playing defense all the time.
I don’t see how there can possibly be even a 1% chance of an ectopic pregnancy succeeding. Even if the tube weren’t going to rupture and kill the mother from the fetus growing, to the best of my understanding, the fetus wouldn’t be attached to a placenta or protected by an amniotic sac because those are uterine structures.
I am long time health care executive. The government may not be tracking all the data but I bet that EPIC knows what is happening in 75% of all the hospitals. In addition, most of the pro baby. ER docs would probably be happy to post on their profiles there stance on it (or at a minimum list the legal procedures they will. Maybe doximity, health grades or some of those services might run a test to see if OBs and ED docs would update their preferences to make it known don't come to them or do come to them.
Too bad there are not any smart people who can read medical literature in the entire GOP. Choose your Drs and representatives wisely. lives depend on it.
Senator Collins here in Maine, a Catholic by the way (not that it's relevant?? 🥸), has refused to support the Women's Health Protection Act, calling it "extreme" because it doesn't allow for "conscience" protections. Harmonie's story -- that's "conscience" in action. "Do a Google, die for all I care -- but don't expect me to save your life by performing a simple life-saving procedure." Frig this shite. And this religion. Thank you, JV!!
RE: Maine — it sounds like Graham Platner is the most popular, and yet he still hasn’t said he’ll support and defend abortion rights in Maine. He’s conveniently avoided the entire topic, and his website is vague in that he defends the right to choose. I think people are finally starting to notice, but wondering whether Mainers already picked up on it / whether he’ll finally commit to protecting the right to abortion / telehealth / shield laws etc ?
Looks like the backlash re past Reddit posts is a big issue for him now. This will hurt a lot in Maine.
I hope you all vote her out soon. I’m cheering you on from over here. Also, we should get rid of “conscience protection laws” for good. A medical professional who refuses to DO THEIR JOB should be fired. We’ve allowed this circus of religious extremism within healthcare to go on far too long.
I agree with your idea of creating a list of doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, etc. who won’t provide abortion care or medicine related to contraception and abortion. I have thought the same thing about businesses that won’t cater to gay people (won’t bake the cake or plan the wedding). Because we have a supreme court who only represents and protects straight white Christians, I have thought that there should be some kind of class action suit to require those businesses to identify as operating according to religious beliefs. Some sort of decal in the window or website- people have a right to not feel humiliated and distressed by being refused care or denied access to a business. Most people that I know wouldn’t choose to use the services- medical or business, of people holding religious views that denigrate them. It would be great for CPC’s to have to identify as ant-abortion.
Every time any one tries to regulate the crisis pregnancy centers, they sue. And because they seem to have unlimited funds… they just keep suing until they win. It’s usually the extremist legal group ADF (alliance defending freedom) supporting the plaintiffs, or aiding the Republican state governments (because not only do republican states NOT regulate CPC’s, they also fund them, with taxpayer money). The Supreme Court is hearing a case about NJ crisis pregnancy centers on Dec 2. The CPC in question, First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, is a faith based center that falsely advertises to women seeking to end unplanned pregnancies, and also offers the abortion reversal pill - just a few of the reasons why the state of NJ sought information under consumer fraud and protection laws etc. Literally, NJ only attempted to get information from the CPC, and the CPC immediately sued. And because of its obviously prolife viewpoints, the CPC managed to completely reframe the question as a free speech issue.
Sorry this is so long, I can go on forever about their legal strategies and propaganda 😫 I wish more doctors WOULD recognize the harm that CPC’s do, and come out against them. It seems like doctors stopped filing amici curiae briefs in these cases, tbh.
Just have to vent on AED's first item before I can even read the rest of the newsletter. How can the doctor Harmonie first saw not be sued for malpractice and not have her licence removed???Not only was there the very real possiblility of Harmonie's tube bursting followed by sepsis but she was not only endangering her patient's life but her fertility since she'd already lost a tube to a previous ectopic. Do Catholic hospitals have their very own review boards, not answerable to state medical review boards? LIke the impenetrability of pedophilia within the church for so long? And this is the math that determines whether a woman will live or die, a 1% chance that her pregnancy might succeed? I feel helpless before the times we live in.
Spot on. I keep thinking that in truth an ectopic pregnancy has a 0% chance of succeeding. It’s like the 1% she spoke of gives her (the OBGYN) an excuse to deny care in Harmonie’s serious health emergency. How is this remotely ethical physician behavior?
I can well understand that many people are urging Harmonie to sue, but they may not know how hard it would be for her to go up against a whole hospital system. Denial of reproductive healthcare, even if flouting of the law and medical standards is easily proven and the risk and trauma inflicted is unconscionable, doesn't seem to be a type of case (like surgical malpractice or auto accident) that attorneys readily take on a contingency basis. Sometimes you do see targets of outrageous political victimization, like Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, getting through a long and wearing legal process and achieving a measure of justice, and you have to figure that their high-profile law firm acted pro bono or could afford to wait years for a contingency fee; and some NGOs like the ACLU and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation are in the business of representing clients for free who stand for important principles. Pro bono representation was in fact how the Roe v. Wade case could be brought in the first place; the complainant could never have afforded it. But these days there seems to be an allergy to ranking reproductive rights as high as they deserve and extending proportionate help through the legal system. I don't blame specialized law firms and NGOs that are fighting to keep reproductive healthcare available; they must be pushed to capacity and beyond just doing that. I do blame the powerhouse legal establishment, which is either playing it safe (fearing political retaliation, or pandering to powerful interests intent on selling women out) or simply doesn't classify a women's issue, no matter how existential, as important. If we want this to change, we have to apply pressure. Why not flood, say, the Legal AF network with demands that the smug lawyer-journalists get their heads out of their asses and start to cover what the Trump regime's assault on the rule of law means to women? If they discussed THIS legal outrage for a few minutes - an innocent woman brushed off and put at high risk of infertility or death by an anti-abortion cult fanatic empowered as a healthcare provider; and not that clown James Comey who's going to walk away whistling from a prosecution by the tyrant he helped install - then the news would spread more quickly and widely, and Harmonie might land a good volunteer lawyer on the usual rationale: winning such a case for such a client is fantastic advertising for an ambitious firm. In the end, it's a matter of what WE demonstrate we care about.
"I do blame the powerhouse legal establishment, which is ... or simply doesn't classify a women's issue, no matter how existential, as important."
That's an interesting angle. It's popular to characterize anti-abortionists as misogynist. But that suggests they care about women somehow in some important way. But it really is probably more the problem that they don't see women as being important at all and their complaints as just getting in the way of higher purposes. To them, feminism is ironic, a feeble gesture of no real cause or reason. They are more interested in putting women in their place, which is to say, no place in particular beyond bearing children and the associated labor of raising them and maintaining a home.
Question: Is there a public list of these Handmaids Tale Obgyns in the blue states? Their names need to be published and disseminated.
This administration and the sadistic (Catholic) SCOTUS 6 don’t care about EMTALA. In fact, I’m pretty sure they are working to get the perfect abortion case in front of them ASAP. Alito zeroed in on the language of EMTALA during the last court case. I’m no lawyer, but do understand when the EMTALA law was established, conservatives included wording about stabilizing the “unborn child” as well. Yes, that was during Regan times and you better believe they’ve been planning for this moment ever since.
I look forward to a massive lawsuit against this hospital. When they lose, and money is in the line, maybe they will remember the oath they took.
We have an Ascension hospital here in the Baltimore area and a few clearly affiliated Catholic hospitals in the Baltimore/Washington area. It is criminal that they can operate as healthcare facilities and then deny lifesaving care and procedures to women when they need them under the guise of what? Religious exemption? EMTALA requires emergency treatment. I do hope she sues this physician and facility.
No religious organizations should own or operate healthcare facilities.
Nearly 40 years ago I raced my wife to the emergency room for what turned out to have been an ectopic pregnancy. From the time we hit the ER until she was under anesthesia in the OR was less than 15 minutes. The surgeon later told me that if we'd been delayed another 10 minutes she would have died. Had the ER resident physician felt he had to call an attending, she would have died. Had the surgeon felt he needed to call the hospital attorney, she would have died. Had we lived in Texas or Louisiana or other abortion ban states today, she would have died. I wrote my monograph "Prohibition 2.0: The Ghosts of Prohibition Haunting the Anti-Abortion Crusade" because abortion bans are the cutting edge of the autocratic sword. But for me this is more than an academic exercise - it is deeply personal.
Where is your monograph available?
The monograph is as-of-yet unpublished but key sections will be included in my forthcoming book Trumpianity. The current manuscript (PDF) can be viewed and/or downloaded at https://www.trumpianity.us/. Section IV, Why Abortion Bans are the Cruel Cutting Edge of the Autocratic Sword, is pages 91-96. Comments welcome!
So where is this monograph posted? Your substack is empty.
The monograph is as-of-yet unpublished but key sections will be included in my forthcoming book Trumpianity. The current manuscript (PDF) can be viewed and/or downloaded at https://www.trumpianity.us/. Section IV, Why Abortion Bans are the Cruel Cutting Edge of the Autocratic Sword, is pages 91-96. Comments welcome! Thanks.
PS: with regards to Substack I am a tech troglodyte still trying to figure out how to make it work ;-)
I didn't read far enough. I'll watch for it.
If you send me your email address I will send you the current (very much a work in progress) draft. My email is Joe@JoeTye.com.
You got a Substack. The best way to learn this stuff is to just jump in. Notice that you can put up a bunch of stuff and just leave it in drafts. You don't actually have to publish it, which is to say, you don't have to actually put it on line to see how this stuff works. And you can preview it before publishing as well.
Thanks again for the nudge. I just posted my first - comments welcome!
https://open.substack.com/pub/joetye/p/a-memo-to-lethal-pete-from-the-trenches?r=30cltz&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
I've retired now but when I worked with healthcare leaders I would share the mantra Proceed Until Apprehended (Florence Nightingale's attitude about getting stuff done). I guess I need to take my own advice. Thanks!