Welcome to the War on Women! GIven recent attempts to stake out an abortion ban after 15 weeks as the “moderate” position, let’s look at the facts regarding later-term abortions. And just say NO! Do not accept their framing.
Let’s start with the changes that happen to the body of a pregnant person during pregnancy: Morning sickness, backaches, varicose veins, bleeding gums, increased susceptibility to infections, too much body hair, brittle nails, stretch marks, brown patches on the face, larger freckles and moles, acne, sore breasts, leaky breasts, feeling hot, sweating, dehydration, loosened joints and ligaments, sciatica, big feet, and swelling in the feet and ankles.
Then there are “common maternal health conditions” during pregnancy that include anemia, urinary tract infections, depression, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, hyperemesis, and did I mention infections?
Does this sound like something women want to go through if they do NOT want a baby?? Of course not!!
Then there are the life-threatening complications of pregnancy, the incidence of which have been rising in the US pretty steadily over many years: Heart attack, aneurysm, kidney failure, respiratory distress, embolism, disseminated intravascular coagulation (basically, blood clotting all over), eclampsia, stroke, pulmonary edema, sepsis, shock, and needs for blood transfusion and/or tracheostomy and ventilation.
Really, who would volunteer for this just for giggles?
So guys: Pregnant people who have later-term abortions have health emergencies!!! These are desired pregnancies with the hopes and dreams of a healthy baby at the end of 9 months of Hell! And something has gone horribly wrong. Outlaw later-term abortions? You KILL women. And do NOT save any babies! Later abortions are sought because either the something is terribly wrong with the fetus and it will not survive, or because something is terribly wrong with the mothers and they will not survive, in which case the fetuses also will not survive. We need to demand that legislators stop trying to practice Medicine without a license!
In Other News
The Bad
Abortion
Well first, as you know by now, this week Lindsey Graham has been a colossal a-hole: Lindsey Graham proposes new national abortion restrictions bill
As has the WV legislature: West Virginia Legislature passes abortion ban with narrow exceptions
Follow-up story from the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/...
Louisiana woman carrying unviable fetus forced to travel to New York for abortion:
Nancy Davis suffered ‘unspeakable pain’ due to poorly worded law that meant hospital in home state refused to terminate pregnancy
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Davis was about 10 weeks pregnant in late July when an ultrasound at Woman’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital, showed that her fetus was missing the top of its skull, a rare but fatal condition known as acrania that kills babies within days – and sometimes minutes – of birth.
-snip-
Louisiana’s list of conditions justifying an exception from the state’s abortion ban did not explicitly include acrania. So officials at the hospital where Davis had her ultrasound refused to provide an abortion for her, apparently fearing that they could be exposed to prison time, fines and forfeiture of their licenses to practice if they performed the procedure.
reuters via medscape US Abortion Clinic Moves One mile up the Street to neighboring state, to Escape the initial State's Ban
MEdicine
medscape COMMENTARY Literal Toxic Masculinity? Testosterone and COVID-19 Outcomes
….It's been clear since very early on in the pandemic that men fare worse with COVID than women do.
This is true for both hospitalization rates and death, as this graph, which looks at the ratio of deaths in men to women over time across various states, shows….
Whenever biological differences are measured between men and women, all eyes turn to the sex hormones first. After all, testosterone levels are around 20-fold higher in men than in women, and hormones have profound biologic effects….
Emphasis added by mettle. Because deal with the facts.
medscape Another unintended pregnancy risk: Isotretinoin Prescribers (e.g., treating acne) Need Better Education on Emergency Contraception
medscape Texas District Court Allows Employers to Deny HIV PrEP Coverage
Racism
medscape blog Encountering Racial Abuse as a Trainee: A Call to Action, by Miranda Ntorinkansah, Medical student, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
International
Iranian president orders probe after 22-year-old woman reportedly dies in custody of "morality police": She was arrested because they “found fault with her headscarf”:
'The circumstances leading to the suspicious death in custody of 22-year-old young woman Mahsa Amini, which include allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in custody, must be criminally investigated,' Amnesty International said.
'The so-called "morality police" in Tehran arbitrarily arrested her three days before her death while enforcing the country's abusive, degrading and discriminatory forced veiling laws. All agents and officials responsible must face justice,' it added.
On Twitter, prominent Iranian lawyer Saeed Dehghan described Amini's death as a 'murder,' saying she had suffered a blow to the head which had caused the base of her skull to fracture.
The Good
Sorta good, anyway
Piper Lewis, a 15-year-old trafficked teen, stabbed her rapist to death and was sentenced to 5 years probation and $150,000 restitution to his family. A GoFundMe raised the restitution money in less than 24 hours, with enough left to get her a new start in life.
TheConversation Barbara Ehrenreich helped make inequality visible – her legacy lives on in a reinvigorated labor movement
by Adia Harvey Wingfield
Have you heard of Jaz Brisack, Liz Fong-Jones and Chris Smalls?
Those names might not be familiar to all Americans, but their recent accomplishments amount to a potential sea change in labor rights.
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I believe that their work, part of a surge in labor organizing and other kinds of community-building efforts, has its roots in the scholarship and journalism of Barbara Ehrenreich, who died Sept. 1, 2022…..
medscape Doctors and Children's Authors: A Tale of Two Professions
These are 3 amazing women!
...Many physicians will say they felt called to practice medicine. But having a calling does not necessarily mean that it's the only gift one has to give.
Here, three women who were already juggling a demanding medical practice and motherhood rediscovered their love of writing and carved out time to hone their craft. Today, Diana Farid, MD, MPH, Rajani LaRocca, MD, and Dow Phumiruk, MD, are award-winning children's book authors and YA novelists — a pursuit that has had a profound impact on their lives and medical practice. They spoke with Medscape about how the practice of medicine informs their writing and vice versa, and how you can get your book into the eager hands of young readers.
Interview with Prominent Epidemiologist Katherine Flegal
medscape interview of a key discoverer of the obesity paradox: "Scientific findings should be evaluated on their merits, not on the basis of whether they fit a desired narrative.” “I think that when you find a result that you don’t expect, the interesting thing ought to be, how can we look into this in a different way? Not just to say that this is giving the wrong message so it should be suppressed. Because that’s not really science, in my opinion.” - Katherine Flegal, 2022.
[In setting archaeology aspirations aside, Flegal paved a unique] path, ultimately serving nearly 30 years as an epidemiologist at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), part of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There, she spent decades crunching [millions of] numbers to describe the health of the nation's people, especially as it related to body size… [By 2016, her work had been cited in 143,000 books and articles.]
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[Questions of how BMI relates to mortality, and where on the BMI scale the lowest risk lies, remains] a subject of scientific debate, with additional analyses often being followed by multiple Letters to the Editor protesting the methods or interpretation. It's clear that carrying excess fat can increase the risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes and some types of cancers, but Flegal's work cautioned against tidy assumptions about the complex relationship between body size, health and mortality….
Interview at the top link. Katherine Flegal at Wiki is
an American epidemiologist and senior scientist at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics. She is one of the most highly cited scientists in the field of the epidemiology of obesity according to Thomson Reuters[2] and has been called "one of the great epidemiologists" by former FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler.[3]
Statue for fashion designer
In 1938, Maryland’s Claire McCardell started changing women’s fashion, www.washingtonpost.com/… Clothes that fit comfortably and looked smart, denim, pockets, ballet slippers instead of heels, so that a woman could look like “a person to be reckoned with”. Honoured with a statue last fall in Frederick, Maryland.
I couldn’t find a photo with reprint permissions, but see her statue and more about it here, www.aushermanfamilyfoundation.org/…
The Actions
You might like to sign this Public Citizen petition, in objection to Graham’s abortion bill and more importantly this part: “Instead, set aside the filibuster for the purpose of passing legislation that will codify abortion access and reproductive rights into federal law.”
NARAL Power of Choice events, in person or virtual www.prochoiceamerica.org/…
And you can volunteer with NARAL here, secure.everyaction.com/…
As always, this is a group effort. Thanks this week to mettle fatigue, SandraLLAP, officebss, and Tara the Antisocial Social Worker for links and discussion behind the scenes!
And as always, I may be late: I take care of my 90ish Mom, so if I don’t make it back at the time the diary posts then please post any other items below, and discuss amongst yourselves! I’ll check back in when I can.