The Assault on Womens Sexual and Reproductive Rights

[Cin]

Since stealing the presidency for Bush caused a host of unforeseen difficulties for the Republicans, and ultimately for everyone, the GOP luckily discovered it really doesn't matter that much who is POTUS if they can control the House, the Senate, the Media, and the Supreme Court. Of course there is that pesky issue of nominating Supreme Court judges, that does make POTUS somewhat desirable. So we will see how that plays out for them this time around.

But until then, through gerrymandering, voter suppression and legislative tricks, the GOP has managed to gain control of the House and the Senate. The Supreme Court is systematically dismantling individual rights and freedoms, while protecting the personhood of corporations. Since corporations have the same rights as people, except corporate rights are more diligently protected, it is only a matter of time before the Corporate powers that be decide to exercise their 2nd amendment rights. But I digress. Here's a look at the next assault on a woman's right to choose.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...-abortion-case

The Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear a Case that Could Destroy Roe v. Wade

On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear its first abortion case in nine years. At issue in Whole Woman's Health v. Cole is HB 2, an omnibus Texas abortion law that made national headlines in 2013 after Texas Sen. Wendy Davis spent 11-hours filibustering the bill that eventually passed anyway.

Since 1992, the court has ruled on three abortion cases, each time affirming further abortion restrictions. In 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a divided court upheld the right to abortion, but left it to the states to set abortion restrictions, saying that these regulations can't put an "undue burden" on abortion access. This broad ruling opened the door for the hundreds of so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers or TRAP laws that states have passed in recent years—onerous regulations placed on abortion providers, often purporting to protect women's health. In its last ruling in 2007, the court upheld a law outlawing dilation-and-extraction second-trimester abortions. If the court continues its pattern of voting against abortion rights and rules to allow Texas to move forward with several burdensome abortion restrictions, it will open the door for other states to do the same, dealing a serious blow to the right to legal abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.

"The Court now has the opportunity to decide whether we will continue to allow elected officials to play politics with women's health," wrote Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a statement. "This case represents the greatest threat to women's reproductive freedom since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade over 40 years ago. Laws like the ones being challenged in Texas are designed to subvert the Constitution and end the right to a safe and legal abortion."

In this case, the justices are expected to focus on two of the Texas law's most onerous requirements: that abortions be performed in ambulatory surgical centers, hospital-like facilities that specialize in outpatient surgery, and the requirement that abortion providers obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Many medical professionals argue that these restrictions put unnecessary burdens on abortion providers: Building and maintaining an ASC is expensive, given the strict requirements regarding features like hallway width and ventilation. Nor do ASCs enhance the standard of care for abortion; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical groups have repeatedly noted that the procedure can be safely performed in a typical doctor's office. The admitting privileges' provision gives hospitals in conservative communities or with a religious affiliation the power to effectively stop abortions by denying the necessary admission privileges to doctors.

"The common-sense measures Texas has put in place elevate the standard of care and protect the health of Texas women," wrote Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement released following Friday's Supreme Court's announcement. "We look forward to demonstrating the validity of these important health and safety requirements in Court."

The number of abortion clinics in Texas has already been cut by more than half, as elements of HB 2, such as restrictions on medication abortion, a 20 week abortion ban, and the admitting privileges requirement, have gone into effect over the last two years. Before the law, there were 41 clinics in Texas. Today, there are 18. As my colleague Molly Redden reported in September, this has created large swathes of the state where women must travel hundreds of miles to get abortion care. If the Supreme Court upholds HB2 in full, including the ambulatory surgical center requirement, the number of abortion clinics in Texas could fall to ten.

[Cin]

[Cin]

This morning an article about a Washington Post poll explained 3rd party voters are hurting Clinton and not Trump. It stated that the large majority of 3rd party voters would usually be voting Democrat. It also mentioned these people are voting Gary Johnson 3 to 1 over Jill Stein. This is really puzzling to me, this love of Libertarian ideology. Not that I am advocating anyone vote 3rd party instead of voting for Clinton, but if you must vote 3rd party, why Libertarian over Green? Isn't what is going on environmentally scary enough to get people's attention? What is it going to take? And I really don't get this attraction to Libertarian ideals. I am not going to get into what those ideals entail in this thread but this is a simplistic interpretation of the ideology that would shred the social contract between the government and its citizens; libertarians generally believe the power of government should be limited to what is necessary to protect the rights of the citizenry. The government does little to protect the rights of the citizenry as it is, we don't need more limitations. Here is an article explaining how Catholic hospitals are putting women's lives at risk and getting judicial support allowing them to continue medical negligence.

https://rewire.news/article/2016/09/...e-denial-care/

Appeals Court Won’t Hold Catholic Hospital Responsible for Denial of Care

In 2010, when Tamesha Means showed up at Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, Michigan, while having a miscarriage, she had every reason to expect the hospital doctors and staff would treat her emergency medical condition. Instead, the Catholic-affiliated health-care entity turned her away twice, effectively telling her to just “wait and see” what would happen.

Means filed suit against Mercy Health Partners and the United Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 2013. On Thursday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she had failed to state a viable legal claim.

Thursday’s ruling is a narrow one. It does not prevent other patients who have faced similar denials of care from Catholic-affiliated health care facilities from suing based on those denials. But it does suggest those claims will be very difficult to win.

Means’ case is, in some ways, the perfect example of conservative federal courts’ reluctance to second-guess the medical decisions made at religiously affiliated hospitals. When Means first showed up at Mercy, the only hospital in her county, she was 18 weeks pregnant. Her water had broken, and she was beginning to miscarry. Doctors and staff at Mercy Health—which is operated by Trinity Health, a multi-billion dollar network of Catholic-run hospitals—told Means there was no medical care they could offer her. That was because treatment would mean the termination of her pregnancy: a violation of Catholic directives preventing any care resulting in the death of a fetus, even a non-viable one.

So instead, they sent Means home.

Means came back the next day, in pain and this time bleeding vaginally. As detailed in court documents, doctors and staff at Mercy again told Means the only thing they could do was to wait and see how the miscarriage progressed.

Means returned to Mercy Health a third time just days later. Now, she was suffering from a significant infection from her untreated miscarriage. This time, instead of telling Means to just wait it out, hospital staff gave Means some aspirin to treat her fever and prepared to send her home yet again. But before the hospital discharge process for Means was complete, she started to deliver her dying fetus. It wasn’t until then that the hospital agreed to admit her; she delivered a baby who died within hours of birth.

Means eventually sued, claiming the Catholic directives followed by the hospital amount to the provision of negligent care.

These “Ethical and Religious Directives” are not the same thing as professional standards of care, which dictate when a hospital or doctor has committed an act of medical negligence. Rather, they are expressions of religious beliefs. Still, Mercy deferred to them as a defense for its actions, saying its doctors and staff did nothing wrong in relying on those directives, rather than medical standards, when they turned away Means and refused to treat her.

And both a lower court and, now, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled Means’ case could not go forward. This was, in part, because the court felt it was not its job to judge the directives and decide whether or not following them amounted to negligence in the delivery of health care by Mercy and its doctors and staff.

Part of these decisions rests in a legal doctrine dating back more than 100 years called “ecclesiastical abstention.” Both the federal district court and the court of appeals ruled in part that this doctrine prevents courts from reviewing cases like Means’.

According to the doctrine of ecclesiastical abstention, civil courts should be limited in their role in deciding matters of religious controversy. The idea behind the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine is that courts should not settle what would amount to disputes about religious doctrine, which Catholic-affiliated hospitals like Mercy claim their refusal to provide health care to patients like Means amounts to. Specifically in Means’ case, the defendants claimed the directives offer “a statement of the Roman Catholic Church’s moral and religious postures as it relates to health care issues” and are in place “to provide authoritative guidance on certain moral issues that face Catholic health care today.” That means, the bishops and Mercy argued, that interpreting the directives in the context of whether or not carrying out those directives amounts to medical malpractice means interpreting Catholic theology. And according to the bishops and Mercy Health, that is exactly the kind of thing which the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine prohibits.

Thursday’s ruling did not decide definitively whether or not the directives are insulated from judicial review in cases of medical negligence. Instead the court ruled that the USCCB could not be sued in Michigan in this case. According to the court, USCCB’s action of publishing the directives does not “create a substantial connection” between USCCB and Michigan hospitals sufficient to justify bringing the bishops into court to respond to claims like Means’.

But the court used topsy-turvy logic to justify refusing to allow Means to sue the USCCB. According to the court, “Michigan—like every state—does have Catholic hospitals, and USCCB does intend the Directives to be implemented by all Catholic healthcare institutions. USCCB may even have known that Trinity Health is a Catholic hospital network operating in Michigan,” the court wrote. But this is not a “substantial connection” enough that USCCB could expect to be sued when following those directives results in medical negligence, according to the court. Similarly, Mercy cannot be sued in this case for following those national directives.

Approximately one in six hospital beds in the United States are in a facility where health-care delivery is governed by the Catholic directives. In some states, more than 40 percent of all beds fall into that category, with those hospitals routinely refusing to provide comprehensive reproductive health care to patients. As Means’ case illustrates, some patients’ only choice is to seek care at a Catholic-affiliated hospital. If courts are unwilling to hold those institutions accountable for delivering to their patients shoddy and substandard care, in part on the grounds that those hospitals have a religious imperative that courts cannot second-guess, where does that leave patients like Means, whose lives are being put at risk in the name of religiously driven health care?

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Hospitals and hospital staff have judicial backing to put lives at risk because of their religious beliefs. It seems like it would be possible to not treat someone who had medical issues because they used birth control. I guess it would be possible to refuse treatment to a person who was gay or transgender for religious reasons. It's very scary.

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by Cin

This morning an article about a Washington Post poll explained 3rd party voters are hurting Clinton and not Trump. It stated that the large majority of 3rd party voters would usually be voting Democrat. It also mentioned these people are voting Gary Johnson 3 to 1 over Jill Stein. This is really puzzling to me, this love of Libertarian ideology. Not that I am advocating anyone vote 3rd party instead of voting for Clinton, but if you must vote 3rd party, why Libertarian over Green? Isn't what is going on environmentally scary enough to get people's attention? What is it going to take? And I really don't get this attraction to Libertarian ideals. I am not going to get into what those ideals entail in this thread but this is a simplistic interpretation of the ideology that would shred the social contract between the government and its citizens; libertarians generally believe the power of government should be limited to what is necessary to protect the rights of the citizenry. The government does little to protect the rights of the citizenry as it is, we don't need more limitations. Here is an article explaining how Catholic hospitals are putting women's lives at risk and getting judicial support allowing them to continue medical negligence.

https://rewire.news/article/2016/09/...e-denial-care/

Appeals Court Won’t Hold Catholic Hospital Responsible for Denial of Care

In 2010, when Tamesha Means showed up at Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon, Michigan, while having a miscarriage, she had every reason to expect the hospital doctors and staff would treat her emergency medical condition. Instead, the Catholic-affiliated health-care entity turned her away twice, effectively telling her to just “wait and see” what would happen.

Means filed suit against Mercy Health Partners and the United Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in 2013. On Thursday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that she had failed to state a viable legal claim.

Thursday’s ruling is a narrow one. It does not prevent other patients who have faced similar denials of care from Catholic-affiliated health care facilities from suing based on those denials. But it does suggest those claims will be very difficult to win.

Means’ case is, in some ways, the perfect example of conservative federal courts’ reluctance to second-guess the medical decisions made at religiously affiliated hospitals. When Means first showed up at Mercy, the only hospital in her county, she was 18 weeks pregnant. Her water had broken, and she was beginning to miscarry. Doctors and staff at Mercy Health—which is operated by Trinity Health, a multi-billion dollar network of Catholic-run hospitals—told Means there was no medical care they could offer her. That was because treatment would mean the termination of her pregnancy: a violation of Catholic directives preventing any care resulting in the death of a fetus, even a non-viable one.

So instead, they sent Means home.

Means came back the next day, in pain and this time bleeding vaginally. As detailed in court documents, doctors and staff at Mercy again told Means the only thing they could do was to wait and see how the miscarriage progressed.

Means returned to Mercy Health a third time just days later. Now, she was suffering from a significant infection from her untreated miscarriage. This time, instead of telling Means to just wait it out, hospital staff gave Means some aspirin to treat her fever and prepared to send her home yet again. But before the hospital discharge process for Means was complete, she started to deliver her dying fetus. It wasn’t until then that the hospital agreed to admit her; she delivered a baby who died within hours of birth.

Means eventually sued, claiming the Catholic directives followed by the hospital amount to the provision of negligent care.

These “Ethical and Religious Directives” are not the same thing as professional standards of care, which dictate when a hospital or doctor has committed an act of medical negligence. Rather, they are expressions of religious beliefs. Still, Mercy deferred to them as a defense for its actions, saying its doctors and staff did nothing wrong in relying on those directives, rather than medical standards, when they turned away Means and refused to treat her.

And both a lower court and, now, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals have ruled Means’ case could not go forward. This was, in part, because the court felt it was not its job to judge the directives and decide whether or not following them amounted to negligence in the delivery of health care by Mercy and its doctors and staff.

Part of these decisions rests in a legal doctrine dating back more than 100 years called “ecclesiastical abstention.” Both the federal district court and the court of appeals ruled in part that this doctrine prevents courts from reviewing cases like Means’.

According to the doctrine of ecclesiastical abstention, civil courts should be limited in their role in deciding matters of religious controversy. The idea behind the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine is that courts should not settle what would amount to disputes about religious doctrine, which Catholic-affiliated hospitals like Mercy claim their refusal to provide health care to patients like Means amounts to. Specifically in Means’ case, the defendants claimed the directives offer “a statement of the Roman Catholic Church’s moral and religious postures as it relates to health care issues” and are in place “to provide authoritative guidance on certain moral issues that face Catholic health care today.” That means, the bishops and Mercy argued, that interpreting the directives in the context of whether or not carrying out those directives amounts to medical malpractice means interpreting Catholic theology. And according to the bishops and Mercy Health, that is exactly the kind of thing which the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine prohibits.

Thursday’s ruling did not decide definitively whether or not the directives are insulated from judicial review in cases of medical negligence. Instead the court ruled that the USCCB could not be sued in Michigan in this case. According to the court, USCCB’s action of publishing the directives does not “create a substantial connection” between USCCB and Michigan hospitals sufficient to justify bringing the bishops into court to respond to claims like Means’.

But the court used topsy-turvy logic to justify refusing to allow Means to sue the USCCB. According to the court, “Michigan—like every state—does have Catholic hospitals, and USCCB does intend the Directives to be implemented by all Catholic healthcare institutions. USCCB may even have known that Trinity Health is a Catholic hospital network operating in Michigan,” the court wrote. But this is not a “substantial connection” enough that USCCB could expect to be sued when following those directives results in medical negligence, according to the court. Similarly, Mercy cannot be sued in this case for following those national directives.

Approximately one in six hospital beds in the United States are in a facility where health-care delivery is governed by the Catholic directives. In some states, more than 40 percent of all beds fall into that category, with those hospitals routinely refusing to provide comprehensive reproductive health care to patients. As Means’ case illustrates, some patients’ only choice is to seek care at a Catholic-affiliated hospital. If courts are unwilling to hold those institutions accountable for delivering to their patients shoddy and substandard care, in part on the grounds that those hospitals have a religious imperative that courts cannot second-guess, where does that leave patients like Means, whose lives are being put at risk in the name of religiously driven health care?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hospitals and hospital staff have judicial backing to put lives at risk because of their religious beliefs. It seems like it would be possible to not treat someone who had medical issues because they used birth control. I guess it would be possible to refuse treatment to a person who was gay or transgender for religious reasons. It's very scary.

Just the other day, I saw several cars with bumper stickers advertising that the owner of the car is supporting Libertarian Gary Johnson. Most all of those I saw were on very expensive vehicles.....on the surface , it appears to me that affluent people are supporting this type of mindset? I know that appearances can often be misleading, but that's what came to mind when I happened to see bumper stickers on various cars I've seen.

Also, I haven't seen the usual jingoistic rhetoric in support of either Clinton or Trump in bumper stickers on cars either. Or in yards. It's a rather odd thing, this year, because in years past, when there's been tons of open support for any presidential candidate, you didn't have to look too hard to find bumper stickers or yard signs.

My role at work takes me all over the metro area I live in, so it's kind of weird, if not creepy (to me), to notice hardly any physical sign of support for those who are competing for the presidential seat of power.

Although, when Senator Sanders was actively holding rallies for his own campaign, it was at fever pitch to see support for his presidential run for office.

[*Anya*]

Originally Posted by Kätzchen

Just the other day, I saw several cars with bumper stickers advertising that the owner of the car is supporting Libertarian Gary Johnson. Most all of those I saw were on very expensive vehicles.....on the surface , it appears to me that affluent people are supporting this type of mindset? I know that appearances can often be misleading, but that's what came to mind when I happened to see bumper stickers on various cars I've seen.

Also, I haven't seen the usual jingoistic rhetoric in support of either Clinton or Trump in bumper stickers on cars either. Or in yards. It's a rather odd thing, this year, because in years past, when there's been tons of open support for any presidential candidate, you didn't have to look too hard to find bumper stickers or yard signs.

My role at work takes me all over the metro area I live in, so it's kind of weird, if not creepy (to me), to notice hardly any physical sign of support for those who are competing for the presidential seat of power.

Although, when Senator Sanders was actively holding rallies for his own campaign, it was at fever pitch to see support for his presidential run for office.

Here in right wing Orange County, I have seen several expensive cars, including Escalades and Range Rovers, with Trump bumper stickers.

I also just saw a beat up truck with a bumper sticker that in big letters said: Hillary and in smaller ones: For prison.

John Birch still lives here.

Also, not long ago, I posted about a KKK gathering in an Anaheim park.

*Sigh*

[Shystonefem]

The group, AAFL, in Florida is obtaining or has obtained enough signatures to put abortion on the ballot once again.

This proposal would classify abortion as first degree murder and eligible for the death penalty.

Although the law, even if passed, would be illegal due to Roe V. Wade, it may go the way to the SCOTUS, essentially giving the high Court an opportunity to reverse Roe.

If Hillary wins the election, that's a non-issue.

If Trump wins the election, it is safe to say that it would be cause for concern.

Another personhood issue. SMH

[Kätzchen]

Originally Posted by *Anya*

Here in right wing Orange County, I have seen several expensive cars, including Escalades and Range Rovers, with Trump bumper stickers.

I also just saw a beat up truck with a bumper sticker that in big letters said: Hillary and in smaller ones: For prison.

John Birch still lives here.

Also, not long ago, I posted about a KKK gathering in an Anaheim park.

*Sigh*

My son's are biracial -- predominantly their physical appearance is of black ethnicity. When I first moved to the place I've lived, the first thing I learmed, for our own safety, from an d.v. counselor and personal friend, what that the KKK has *always* had strong roots in my home state in the Pacific northwest.

But it's not just reduced to something simple as the KKK, when dealing with White privilege and it's other driving counterparts of hate, racially motivated hate, etc.

Having lived the better part of life, wirh raising my biracial sons in what used to be considered a safe social segment of society, has not always been easy for my son's or myself.

30+ years of fielding racially motivated behaviors of others has impacted my son's and I for what seems to be an eternity.

I'm not surprised at all that white privilege and racialized hate is still an driving factor in American present day society.

[Kätzchen]

Note to Cin:

To 'steer' the conversation back to your post about Catholic hospitals not being challenged for their pious bedside directives, I agree that the medical empire community needs to take up that issue and develop policy to take back their profession of medical care credo.... to help all who need medical intervention, and not just serve people with tenets of religiosity.

Biased medical care is life threatening, just as unchecked bias (prejudicial treatment) is, and can be, in any profession or social station in society.