There are actual fucking physicians in this world who won’t treat ectopic pregnancies.
I want to cry.
….pretty sure this is actually illegal. Like, if someone comes in to the ER, no matter who they are, what they need, if they are in immediate danger, you have to treat them. It’s problematic from an economic/insurance standpoint (like, logistically, sometimes it is hard to figure out how to pay/who can pay for services), but ultimately, you will get treated.
Actually, most states have conscience clauses that protect doctors who would rather let a woman die from an ectopic pregnancy or hemorrhage to death because of a miscarriage and they are fully within their rights to refuse treatment because of these clauses. AND, depending on the hospital you go to (whether it is affiliated with a church like many hospitals are) they have to refuse to treat you because they aren’t allowed to do certain procedures by the board of directors/ethics committee.
The nun who was excommunicated for allowing an abortion to take place to save a dying woman is a prime example of an ethics committee allowing an abortion in a hospital where they are not allowed to be performed without permission. The church excommunicated the nun because they didn’t think saving the life of the mother justified terminating the 11 week fetus….which would have died with the mother a few weeks later if the abortion had not been allowed. So two deaths, according to the church, would have been better than the one. The 27-year old woman who needed the abortion due to pulmonary hypertension already had four children, too.
Now, doctors can refuse to treat patients due to these conscience clauses without any legal ramifications, but the odds of another doctor being called in to take care of the patient is high. The problem with this, though, is that women end up waiting while in the process of a miscarriage for the doctor to arrive and treat them. I posted a story about a woman who went through a miscarriage and another doctor had to be called that wasn’t affiliated with the hospital she went to because it was a Catholic hospital and none of the doctors would treat her. I’m having trouble finding the link, but this woman was literally bleeding to death in front of these doctors while waiting for the other doctor to arrive and no one even offered her pain medication. Instead they kept talking about how interesting of a case study she was while she was dying. She survived because the doctor finally showed up and performed the D&C she needed but she could have died while waiting for it. AND THIS IS COMPLETELY LEGAL BECAUSE OF ANTI-CHOICE LEGISLATION.
In any other case, a person bleeding to death would be treated immediately, but because it happens to be a pregnant woman (whose fetus, I might add, was already dead) there are laws in place to protect doctors who would rather let her die because they want to “preserve their conscience”. Personally, I don’t see how letting someone die in front of you preserves one’s conscience when you have all the tools available to save that person’s life, but I guess you aren’t a person if you’re pregnant, only the fetus has any sort of value, not the mother of four who is going to die.
Love,
Rabble
