Why does Alabama hate women?

Yesterday my co-blogger provided an overview of the abject anti-Choice situation in the US.

Today, there's news via state media and triumphallists at Lies-Site regarding a decision from the Alabama Supreme Court.

The Alabama Supreme Court ruled today that the state’s chemical endangerment of a child law also pertains to unborn children.

The law was intended to target situations in which children were exposed to conditions such as methamphetamine labs, but women also have been prosecuted for harming their children by using drugs during their pregnancies.

The court’s ruling upheld the convictions of two of those women, Hope Ankrom of Coffee County and Amanda Helaine Borden Kimbrough of Colbert County.

While the law itself makes no mention of unborn children, the court held in its decision that “the plain meaning of the word ‘child’ in the chemical endangerment statute includes unborn children.”

Alabama is one of the most chemically polluted regions in the US.  The rate of miscarriages and mutagenic birth defects is disgusting.  The poverty level, the lack of educational and employment opportunities as well as the shameful absence of adequate health services in that state, are shocking.

Funny how that goes. Hundreds of "unborn" are affected by the greedy, profitable corporations that malevolently poison the air, the ground and the water of Alabama yet the state chooses to criminalize and prosecute individual pregnant women.

Perhaps some enterprising folks should help women and families, who provide care to children with birth defects caused by environmental "chemical endangerment", to lawyer up for the purpose of litigating against corporations that have damaged fetal development in those gestated and born in Alabama.

If that were to start happening, you can bet that "christian" legislators aka wealthy businessmen & politicians, would tweak the application of their Supreme Court decision, to ensure that corporate entities be exempt from any form of accountability, fetal harm and endangerment be damned!

Note: I had considered posting photographs of infants and babies with mutagenic birth defects, à la SUZYALLCAPS for blunt force emotional manipulative effect; after perusing some Google images, I could not.

Kicking Butt with An Arthritic Knee

Seriously, I’m too old for this shit. I feel like I’ve been giving the same lessons on the fundamentals of women’s rights since the 1970s. A court decision ushered in a short period of relative calm and rationality concerning our reproductive rights. It was a done deal, Canadian women had full autonomy of their bodies, and we breathed freely and focused on other work to improve the lives of women and girls.

Harper knew this was the status quo and perfectly acceptable to most, except for a small, loud and annoying minority. That’s why Harper disingenuously claimed that he would not re-open the abortion debate. He was walking that tightline between moderating his image for the general public and appeasing his hard right supporters. But Harper is a liar and pushed his agenda incrementally. It’s been a carousel of slight of hand initiatives (e.g., the Status of Women cuts and mandate changes, the CIDA maternal health program and defunding of Planned Parenthood, the appointment of a rookie, anti-abortion backbencher as Minister for the Status of Women) and disingenuous motions from individual backbench MPs (e.g., Epps, Vellacott, Bruinooge).

The bottom line is that Woodsworth is a dishonest, evangelical, woman-hating creep who is more concerned with getting a toe in on criminalizing abortion than about updating a 400 year old law where the toe in a birth canal is some defining benchmark for legal personhood. And it’s galling to see self-described progressives claim that such a debate is timely and reasonable.

There are no nuances that need debating when it comes to my right to decide what I do with my body FULL STOP. My ‘lady bits’ (h/t Alison) are wizened and of little interest to these patriarchal hacks, but I will continue to kick and scream in order to protect the rights of younger women and future generations, so they too can consult with their GPs about health decisions in privacy and without intimidation.

Meanwhile, let’s hope we manage to save universal healthcare so that clinical termination of pregnancies and knee replacement surgery remain accessible for all.

Something horrible

I just learned something horrible about US health care. Now, I have been living it for the past several years, and I know quite a bit about how horrifically stupid the payment system is. Practically every US resident has had at least a minor experience of inconvenience that is incomprehensible to most Canadians. But I just learned from someone something that takes the cake and that I never realized.

OK, so, I always knew that American health care providers, no matter how compassionate, practice wallet-based care. Even the ones who give pro bono care at charity institutions are doing so in the knowledge that they are forgoing payment---and give care only to the very poorest.

So, fine, *sigh*, that is health care kepitalism for you. If you're the uninsured working lower class, you're pretty much screwed. I don't like it, it's inhumane and absurd, but that's what falls out of the belief system that underlies it.

But here's where it gets weird---for people who are lucky enough to have employer-sponsored insurance.

To control costs, US private insurers have special deals with certain family doctors and specialists. The big ones, with a very large number of them. This is called an insurer's "network". Under normal circumstances, this actually works out not all that differently from, say, OHIP (or substitute your province's plan) plus a user fee. If you go to an "in-network" doctor, you show the card, pay a (relatively) small user fee, and you see the doctor or have surgery or whatever. The insurers act like OHIP/whatever in this case and negotiate lower rates for themselves in exchange for driving business to these doctors. So you have to do some due diligence to make sure that you go to an "in-network" doctor. A US insurer is, in theory, like a sort of decentralised provincial provider.

But if you go to an "out-of-network" doctor without insurer-negotiated fees, you either bear the full cost yourself, or many plans pay out 80% and make you pay 20% of that doctor's fee in order to discourage "out-of-network" use. OK, so far so good, you can avoid these doctors. (Actually, many people---Americans---don't realize...)

Or can you? Say you're having surgery. That can involve a bunch of medical professionals. So, you show up, talk to your surgeon's assistant, find out that s/he is "in-network", and get onto the operating table. And it's all good. Right?

Wrong.

Quite a few of those professionals, you see, may NOT actually be "in-network." Particularly anaesthetists and pathologists and so on---the latter you might not meet or know is treating you. Oh, they may be working in the hospital or clinic. But they all bill separately.

So, a few months later, you could find a nasty surprise: a bill from your anaesthetist. And guess what. Being "out-of-network", the anaesthetist or whatever can bill whatever they want, and your insurance can pay either 0% or 80% or whatever. But of course, the anaesthetist has no incentive not to bill thousands of dollars for a half-hour's worth of work.

And despite the fact that you had no idea, you are now in potentially unexpected debt-peonage to an anaesthetist---since medical bankruptcy has been made very difficult.

But, it gets worse. Billing errors abound. What if, say, your "in-network" doctor fails to keep his/her registration with the insurer current. Then the insurer won't pay the full-amount. So, you'd imagine, this is the doctor's responsibility, since s/he made the error, right?

Nope.

It's your job to pay the entire bill, or the portion that the insurer won't pay for "out-of-network" costs. Even though it was the doctor's billing error.

THAT is why people who tell you that medical care should be subject to the "free" "market" should be put in the stocks for months. Not just the inhumanity of the idea---that is ideology---but the inherent lying and fraud involved. That is also why the doctors (specialists) are greatly at fault in the US system, not just the insurers. Because doctors can choose to put their patients into debt-peonage.

I had no idea until someone explained it to me, and apparently many Americans born and raised here have no idea either. You're screwed despite the fact that you have good insurance. So you can do everything right and still be wrong.

Pregnant women refused H1N1 vaccine in Ottawa.

This was on Radio-Canada.

A group of pregnant women in their first trimester who had been waiting for hours in an Ottawa community health centre for the vaccination against H1N1 flu were told to go home. A health care worker told them that the only form of vaccine that they currently had in stock was the type with an adjuvant. The women were told that health authorities had decided NOT to administer this form of the vaccine to women in the first 20 weeks of their pregnancy.

Unfortunately this information was not communicated to media or to front line health care workers who could have determined from a preliminary triage that these women were candidates for the non-adjuvanted form of the vaccine, which won't be available until next month to clinics. I just checked the CBC news site, it still only identifies all "pregnant women" as a priority group.

One wonders how many of these pregnant women will become ill from being exposed - while waiting for hours in a community centre clinic - to a great number of people, contagious with other illnesses.

It would appear that on the Gatineau side of the river, in spite of other confusion, at least that message was clearly provided.

Update: Urgh - some public health officials are waffling about the risks of the adjuvant administered to first-trimester pregnant women, lots of loose talk about balancing danger of getting H1N1 if one has a pre-existing health conditions and the effect it might have on fetal development. More attemps to cover all eventualities and all asses. Urgh.

Body Bags Sent to Manitoba Reserves as Prep for H1N1

This is beyond horrifying. Mere months after federal officials dithered about what public health resources and material support should be provided to Aboriginal Reserves in Manitoba, this happens.

Aboriginal leaders in Manitoba are horrified that some of the reserves hardest hit by swine flu in the spring have received dozens of body bags from Health Canada.

The body bags — which were sent to the remote northern reserves of Wasagamack, St. Theresa Point and Garden Hill — came in a shipment of hand sanitizers and face masks.

Chief Jerry Knott of Wasagamack First Nation said his community's nursing station received about 30 body bags.

"This disturbed our community members and continues to be a major concern. We had asked for funding so we can get organized and to ensure medicines, hand sanitizers and other preventative kits were in place but, instead, we are shocked to receive the body bags," he said. "To me, this is unacceptable and I am demanding an answer.

Stephen Harper's New Conservative Government: incompetent, callous, or both?

No iPhone Shake-A-Babe game.

While rightwingnutters, religious zealots and assorted abortion criminalizing batshit crazies drool over this, organizations who are seriously committed to the health and safety of vulnerable babies and infants who have come into this world expressed strong concerns about an iPhone game.

Apple Inc. pulled a 99-cent iPhone game called "Baby Shaker" from its iTunes store Wednesday after its premise — quiet a crying baby with a vigorous shake — prompted outrage.

According to screen shots posted on several Web sites, "Baby Shaker" displayed black-and-white line drawings of a baby. The iTunes description included the line, "See how long you can endure his or her adorable cries before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!" Once the iPhone owner finishes shaking the device, the on-screen baby is depicted with large red X's over its eyes. ...

Public outcry ensued, with organizations including the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome and the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation condemning Apple for approving the game's sale.

For those not familiar with Shaken Baby Syndrome it's important to stress that grave injuries occur when parents, care-givers and child minders are unaware of the extreme harm this action can produce and unable to access other strategies to calm and soothe a crying infant. In recent years a number of community-based initiatives have been successful in reducing incidents and increasing awareness of this public health issue.

Shaken Baby Syndrome is neither a laughing nor a gaming matter.

Canadian doctors respond to idiotic claim.

A number of scurrilous schlock news outlet and tabloids are slagging our medical services and repeating one US doctor's speculative claim that Canada's health care system failed Natasha Richardson.

Meanwhile Canadian physicians kept their calm and responded rationally to the ill-founded opinion piece.

The implication “is totally unjustified,” said Paul Saba, an emergency room doctor at Lachine Hospital and co-president of the Coalition of Physicians for Social Justice. He flatly rejected the notion that a lack of funding for overall public health care contributes to fatal head injuries like the one that claimed the life of Richardson ... Saba stressed he was not commenting specifically about Richardson, but “any patient’s refusal of treatment is crucial” to the outcome. ...

Paul Brunet, president of the Council for the protection of patients, said ... “And with all due to respect to the Americans, we don’t need any lessons from them about health care,” Brunet added. Canada doesn’t “have 50 million people without health care like they do.”

Canada's healthcare system killed Richardson, claims US physician.

The New York Post published an obnoxious opinion piece from a physician who claims that Canada's health care system is to blame for Natasha Richardson's death. The serious (and obvious) evidence-supported argument that he should have used - that in the US, rich and famous people have faster and better access to medical interventions - is conspicuously absent from his screed.

On a more positive note, brebis noire and I discussed in the comments after this blogpost whether Richardson might have donated her organs to patients waiting for transplants. It appears that this may be the case.

... her family allowed doctors to keep her organs for those whose lives they could save. The English actress who died after a skiing accident, was buried this week. A friend of her husband, Liam Neeson, told People magazine that she had supported organ donation.

"She spent so much time fighting the stigma of AIDS; someone like that would naturally donate her organs... by donating her organs something good could come out of [the tragedy]," said the un-named friend.

An autopsy performed in New York, where Richardson died at the Lenox Hill Hospital, showed a blow to her head had caused fatal bleeding between her brain and skull, known as an epidural haematoma. Experts said the way she had died would have left her organs viable for donation.

Paparazzi will likely be dumpster-diving behind Lenox Hill Hospital in the hopes of finding confidential documents that will help them locate the beneficiaries of Richardson's final act of generosity.

Palin attacks choice, yet offers nothing to families.

Does this sound familiar? An all-out attack on choice, framed by a fetus fetishist who offers nothing in support of pregnant women and families.

Sarah Palin attacked the Democrats’ presidential candidate once again at a rally in Pennsylvania yesterday, this time for his position on choice.

Speaking at a rally in a packed hockey arena in Johnstown, Palin accused Obama of consistently supporting abortion legislation as a legislator in Illinois and Washington. ”In times like these with wars and financial crisis, I know it may be easy to forget even as deep and abiding concern as a right to life, and it seems that our opponent will forget that,” Palin told about 6,000 supporters in
the arena. “He hopes you won’t notice how radical, absolutely radical, his ideas on this and his record is until it’s too late.” … ”Americans need to see his record for what it is,” Palin said. “And, please, it is not negative, it is not mean-spirited, to talk about his record.”

For the record, here is some information about the Republican and the Democrat platforms regarding support to families.

McCain lacks an articulated family-policy platform, a consistent view on women’s issues, and a perspective on government’s role vis-à-vis children beyond the walls of the schoolhouse. Obama, on the other hand, has well-defined plans for tackling teenage pregnancy, expanding early-childhood education, improving child-support collection, and - importantly - supporting new families as they step into the uncertain terrain of parenthood.The American family is a fragile institution. High rates of poverty, divorce, single parenthood and social isolation exaggerate the typical strains of parenting. As a result, the United States has one of the highest child maltreatment rates among industrialized nations, and generations of children are raised under difficult and sometimes traumatic circumstances.

Against this backdrop, the United States provides few services to support new families. Unlike many European countries, we do not offer universal paid parental leave, universal child care, universal health care, or universal income supports. … Low-income families, in particular, can have a better shot at parenting their children well if given intensive support before, and after, the birth of their child. … If elected, Obama’s initial steps into the field of family policy would signal an important shift in federal policymaking. But it would provide more than a signal to low-income parents. For them and for their children, it might offer a real lifeline to a better future.

From here.

First posted at Birth Pangs