Life and Death? Just Don't Think About It
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Tue Apr 11, 2006 at 01:52:22 AM EST
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Talk to Action's dogemperor has documented extensively, and Ethics Daily concurs, that the Religious Right has an increasingly dangerous tendency to confuse medical mortality and morbidity with divine punishment for what they believe to be sexual impurity -- a moral blindness evident in their response to the cervical cancer vaccine that, when administered to girls under age 16, promises to confer near total immunity in later life.  But the cancer in question is cervical cancer, its precursor is Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), and HPV is contracted through having ... uh ... sex.

Americans United for the Separation of Church and State reported this summer that a spokeswoman for the Family Research Council said young women should have to deal with the consequences of the rapidly spreading sexually transmitted disease rather then rely on a new vaccine.

 "Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV," the FRC's Bridget Maher reportedly told New Scientist. "Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex."

Nick at morons.org summed up the "protection is permission" mindset: "This is probably a legitimate concern -- I know that when I got a tetanus vaccine, the first thing I wanted to do was to run out and play on rusty manure-spreading farm equipment in an effort to get as many puncture wounds as possible."

Image hosting by Photobucket "I personally object to vaccinating children when they don't need vaccinations, particularly against a disease that is one hundred per cent preventable with proper sexual behavior," Leslee J. Unruh, the founder and president of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, said. "Premarital sex is dangerous, even deadly. Let's not encourage it by vaccinating ten-year-olds so they think they're safe."

Unruh, the "pro-life" mouthpiece of record in South Dakota, might be getting her comprehensive knowledge of both child psychology and gynecological epidemiology from her husband Alan, the chiropractor who served as an "expert" consultant to the South Dakota Task Force on Abortion, because her opinion on the sexual morality of cervical cancer sufferers agrees with that of another medical expert, family practitioner and Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. In addition to believing that abortion should be illegal and that abortion-providing doctors deserve the death penalty, in 2004 Senator Coburn testified, "Studies have indicated for years that promiscuity was associated with cervical cancer."

There's an expert medical opinion for you: sluts get cancer.  I wonder whether Dr. Coburn diagnosed his patients by watching prerecorded videos, as Dr. Bill Frist so notoriously did with Terri Schiavo, or whether he actually required them to come in for colposcopy and a biopsy.  As Coburn himself said about Congress (even before he developed his strange obsession with teenage lesbianism), "There are not many normal people up here" - and that's one diagnosis of his with which I heartily concur.

God's little helpers seem to have just as big a mote in their eyes when it comes to the inevitable consequences of banning safe and legal abortion.  Now, along with the rest of the hallelujah chorus, the Concerned Women of America are chirping predictably and on cue.

"Pro-abortion advocates and some politicians claim that the measure is `extreme' since there is no exemption for rape and incest. CWA believes that the killing of an unborn child is extreme no matter how the child was conceived. Every life is precious."
:::
More and more women are beginning to share their tragic experience of abortion. While in a vulnerable condition, many were coerced, not fully informed, and lied to in order to submit to terminating the life of their child. Now they relate how they are suffering physically and emotionally as they mourn the death of their child.

It sounds as though the numbers of repentant women are legion. But the same small group of women, mostly recruited and organized by various chapters of Operation Outcry, is shuttled back and forth across the country to "testify" before legislative committees such as the South Dakota Task Force.  

OPERATION OUTCRY is the project of THE JUSTICE FOUNDATION to end legal abortion by exposing the truth about its devastating impact on women and families. We believe that this will be accomplished through prayer and with the testimonies of mothers who have taken the life of their own unborn babies and of others who have suffered harm from abortion. We are working to restore justice and to protect women, men, and children from the destruction that abortion causes.

It is said that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, and God forbid that we should get the justice that these true believers in the "sanctity of life" are praying for.  

Because he lives and works under constant threat from groups such as Operation Rescue, Warren Hern, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., of Boulder, Colorado is best known as a physician who provides abortion care. But Dr. Hern is also an eminently qualified and profoundly knowledgeable public health physician and epidemiologist.  So unlike the religious propaganda groups who are polluting the public consciousness with dubious "facts" about the putative "tragedies" of abortion, he actually knows what he's talking about.  

In The Epidemiologic Foundations of Abortion Practice [pdf link], Dr. Hern backs up the facts with some sobering figures.

Image hosting by PhotobucketAbortion mortality ratios have ... declined precipitously since 1967 to 1970, the years in which state abortion laws, beginning in Colorado, were liberalized. Prior to that time, deaths due to septic abortion, especially, were a serious health problem, especially for the poor and minorities. In 1967, the mortality rate (per 100,000 live births) due to septic abortion was 1.5 for whites and 10.2 for non-whites. In 1965, Gold and co-workers reported that nearly 50% of all maternal mortality in New York City was due to complications arising from abortion during some periods, and this figure exceeded 60% for Puerto Ricans.
:::
In 1978, the overall death-to-case rate for legally induced abortions fell to 0.5 per 100,000 abortions, whereas the death-to-case rate for term delivery resulting in live births, excluding abortion and not including deaths due to ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, and fetal deaths, was 8 per 100,000 live births, making the risk of death from pregnancy untreated by abortion 16 times greater than the risk of death due to abortion. An overall comparison of death-to-case rates for abortion and pregnancy for the years 1972 to 1978 shows the risk of death per 100,000 events to be 1.9 for abortion versus 11 for live birth.

The South Dakota Legislature didn't ask Dr. Hern to provide testimony to the Task Force on Abortion in Pierre, and small wonder - because unlike Leslee Unruh, Concerned Women for America, or Dr. Tom Coburn,  Dr. Warren Hern deals in the truth.

Another truth is that, in every place in the world where abortion care is illegal, the same things happen: women go to prison, women are maimed for life, women die, and children are orphaned.  In last Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Jack Hitt recounted his recent journey to El Salvador, which is the epitome of what the religious right wants the United States to become - a Pro-Life Nation.  

I had been warned that interviewing anyone who had had an abortion in El Salvador would be difficult. The problem was not simply that in this very Catholic country a shy 24-year-old unmarried woman might feel shame telling her story to an older man. There was also the criminal stigma. And this was why I had come to El Salvador: Abortion is a serious felony here for everyone involved, including the woman who has the abortion. Some young women are now serving prison sentences, a few as long as 30 years.
:::
The South Dakota law, which its backers acknowledge is designed to test Roe v. Wade in the courts, forbids abortion, including those cases in which the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. Only if an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother is the procedure permitted. A similar though less restrictive bill is now making its way through the Mississippi Legislature.

In this new movement toward criminalization, El Salvador is in the vanguard. The array of exceptions that tend to exist even in countries where abortion is circumscribed -- rape, incest, fetal malformation, life of the mother -- don't apply in El Salvador.

El Salvador ... has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus -- the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal. Like the woman I was waiting to meet.
:::
[W]hen a woman might face jail time for an abortion, she's less likely to discuss her pregnancy at all. According to a study on attempted suicide and teen pregnancy published last year by academics at the University of El Salvador, some girls who poison their wombs with agricultural pesticide (its efficacy being a Salvadoran urban legend) would rather report the cause of their resulting hospital visit as "attempted suicide," which is not as felonious a crime nor as socially unbearable as abortion. "They don't want to be interviewed about abortion," Irma Elizabeth Asencio, one of the study's authors, explained to me. "They know they have committed a crime."
:::
As they do in any investigation, the police collect evidence by interviewing everyone who knows the accused and by seizing her medical records. But they must also visit the scene of the crime, which, following the logic of the law, often means the woman's vagina.

"Yes, we sometimes call doctors from the Forensic Institute to do a pelvic exam," [Prosecutor Flor Evelyn] Tópez said, ... "and we ask them to document lacerations or any evidence such as cuts or a perforated uterus." In other words, if the suspicions of the patient's doctor are not conclusive enough, then in that initial 72-hour period, a forensic doctor can legally conduct a separate search of the crime scene. Tópez said, however, that vaginal searches can take place only with "a judge's permission." Tópez frequently turned the pages of a thick law book she kept at hand. "The prosecutor can order a medical exam on a woman, because that's within the prosecutor's authority."

Are you telling yourself that it can't happen here? The South Dakota ban, like the paradoxical fundamentalist mindset that inspired it, casts the woman who has an abortion as an ignorant and innocent victim.  But other bills already introduced in the U.S. would send a woman who had an abortion, and anyone who helped her, to prison just as surely as does the law in El Salvador. And even though the South Dakota ban exempts a woman from being charged under that law, Lynn Paltrow and Charon Asetoyer have detailed how other state statutes already in effect clearly expose her to prosecution.  

In October 2004, when Republican Jim DeMint was a candidate for the U.S. Senate, he appeared on "Meet the Press" with Tim Russert, who repeatedly asked DeMint to explain his position in favor of a total ban on all abortion procedures. DeMint repeatedly refused to give Russert a straight answer.

Would you prosecute a woman who had an abortion? DeMint said he thought Congress should outlaw all abortions first and worry about the fallout later. "We've got to make laws first that protect life," he said. "How those laws are shaped are going to be a long debate."

Russert refused to leave the congressman alone. "Who would you prosecute?" he persisted.

Finally DeMint blurted, "You know, I can't come up with all the laws as we're sitting right here, but the question is, Are we going to protect human life with our laws?"

A better question is whether we're going to let fundamentalist religionists like Jim DeMint, Leslee Unruh, Bill Napoli and Sam Brownback do our thinking for us.

[Title image courtesy of William W. West, M.D.]



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Life and Death? Just Don't Think About It | 12 comments (12 topical, 0 hidden)
On the other hand . . . (none / 0)
Maybe there's no cognitive dissonance here at all. Maybe they understand exactly what they're asking for, and can't wait for the women of this country to get it.

by moiv on Tue Apr 11, 2006 at 03:04:00 AM EST
Speaking as someone who's been there... (none / 0)
Oh, I think they know very well exactly what they're doing.  Remember, quite a few of these groups even explicitly preach that women who want an equal status with men in marriages and household relationships are possessed by "Jezebel spirits" (interestingly, this has also come up in two separate cases where dominionist mothers killed their kids--the cases of Andrea Yates and Dena Schlosser), that women should not divorce their husbands even if the husband is actively committing incestuous child rape with their children, that it is not even their own decision as to how many kids they have but their husband's, etc.

And no, this is NOT uncommon, especially in the "deliverance ministry" communities and groups into pente-style "spiritual warfare" movements; it's even spreading into groups like the Southern Baptist Convention.

by dogemperor on Tue Apr 11, 2006 at 10:11:44 AM EST
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*blush* (none / 0)
I'm rather impressed you referenced one of my articles--then again, I'm also very glad Ethics Daily is picking this up (they're one of the first groups to break that the Southern Baptist Seminary's academics VP is training his kids to be sociopaths, among others).

One thing people don't know is that dominionists have had a very long history of this.  Not just in the realm of preventing cervical cancer (or, rather, fighting the HPV vaccine claiming in essence it will give women a license to fornicate--never mind that HPV is also the major cause of cancer of the penis, never mind there are lots of other potentially fatal and/or sterility-threatening STDs out there (like, oh, HIV or herpes or even multidrug-resistant gonorrhea) to worry about).

In fact, almost identical arguments were used against "the pill" before dominionists hit on the claim that "the pill" (in both Plan B "morning-after pill" form and the conventional methods, and in fact now even including "the patch", Norplant, Depo-Provera, and practically all other methods of hormonal birth control) was a form of abortion.  Here, too, teens have been denied essential healthcare because of it (I myself have been witness to this in my own family with my sister, who has PCOS and takes "the pill" as a medically required drug to manage this endocrine disorder which--if untreated--can cause diabetes, obesity, and other severe health consequences (so yes, "the pill" and Depo-Provera are actually lifesaving medications); I have taken it myself for a history of protracted, extremely painful (requiring prescription analgesia) and irregular periods as a method to regulate my hormonal cycles; both of us were denied permission to take it by our dominionist mother and by her doctor (who is a member of a dominionist "pro life doctors" group and who has been sanctioned by the state medical board specifically for performing gynecological exams on women without qualification--he literally could not find ovaries on a woman by palpation), and we had to (upon majority) take it upon ourselves to find qualified OB/GYNs to get medically necessary treatment).  As recently as last year, at least one dominionist group was making that claim to lobby to prevent a state university system from dispensing "the pill" at its student clinics.

I actually have another post, "Every Zygote Is Sacred", or, "Can I have my birth control, already?" which details specifically how dominionists have used various tactics--including literal claims that hormonal birth control would essentially turn women into Loose Women--on "the pill", on HIV medication, and even Zovirax (an anti-herpes medicine which is used for indications far beyond genital herpes (common lifesaving indications are for chickenpox infections in adults and immunocompromised children as well as exposure to "herpes B virus" in primate study facilities and zoos), and is by no means a cure for genital herpes or any other form of herpetic infection).

Should the HPV vaccine be approved, I will not be one bit surprised to see pushes from dominionist groups to expand "moral refusal" laws even further to allow doctors to refuse to give the vaccine.

Whilst I've not noted it on Talk2Action yet, dominionists also gave (and in fact still give) objections to hepatitis B immunisations for the general public.  (In the US and many other countries, hep-B immunisation is now mandatory--partly because nobody can tell if an infant may be infected with hep-B in daycare facilities or schools.)

Dominionists claimed that hep-B is a "gay disease", whinged on why kids were getting shots for "a disease you get from being gay, being promiscuous, or doing drugs", etc.  (Actually, hep-B--like most forms of hepatitis--can be transmitted through any body fluids including dirty diapers of hep-B infected kids or cuts, is often carried by people in poorer countries or even Native American reserves (in fact, simply being Native American or living "on rez" is a risk factor for hep-B), and can be carried by people without knowing it.  Before tests became available, in fact, several people caught it from blood transfusions, and the hep-B antigen was originally termed the "Australia Antigen"--from its identification in Australian Aboriginal populations who have endemic hep-B.)

And, very much like the HPV vaccine, hep-B vaccine is also an anticancer vaccine--hep-B (along with hep-C and "delta hepatitis", a type of hepatitis virus that can only infect in the presence of hep-B) are widely acknowledged as the leading cause of liver cancer and in fact hep-B vaccine is widely acknowledged as the world's first anticancer vaccine as a result.

I will also state right now, publically, that I am willing to bet each and every reader of Talk2Action twenty dollars that if and when a safe, effective HIV vaccine is developed, passes human clinical trials, and is up for approval--dominionist groups will fight its approval tooth and nail.  (As it is, the rate of HIV infection in gay men has literally been used by Paul Cameron et al to justify claims on gay men having a much lower life expectancy; in fact, in the earlier days of the AIDS crisis Paul Cameron actually proposed literally rounding up gay men in concentration camps because they might "infect others".)

(Very interestingly, the HPV vaccine could cut the incidence of HIV transmission as a side effect; this article reports how HPV lesions increase transmissability of HIV.  This is another reason I think dominionists would fight an HIV jab tooth and nail.)

Interestingly, an effective HPV vaccine would also destroy another claim used by dominionist followers of Cameron's hack papers (the claim that gay men get "gay bowel disease" and cancer); there is an increased incidence of anal and lower colon cancer in gay men, but this has been proven to be the result of HPV as well.  It's also been noted that the actual rate of anal cancer in gay men is in part related to whether one is co-infected with HIV.  

In fact, the incidence rate of HPV related anal cancer (35 per 100,000) in gay men is--surprise surprise--almost identical to the recorded rates of HPV-related cervical cancer in straight women.  (Interestingly, lesbians are at less risk of almost all STDs save herpes--partly because of the mechanics of lesbian sex.)

Dominionist groups have been using claims of "gay cancer" to imply gay men are basically plague bearers; sites which have promoted this include NARTH (a heavy user of Paul Cameron's hack-job "research"), lifesite.net,  Focus on the Family, and the American Family Association.  An effective HPV vaccine would eliminate one of their major claims, and potentially reduce a second claim, of gay men needing to be eliminated on the basis of being potentially "infectious" (this is one of the fear tactics commonly used to sell anti-gay rhetoric to non-dominionist audiences by dominionists, by the way).

by dogemperor on Tue Apr 11, 2006 at 10:06:06 AM EST

As always (none / 0)
I stand in awe not only of all that you know, but of what you have survived and who you have become.

by moiv on Tue Apr 11, 2006 at 08:27:42 PM EST
Parent


What is the value of... (none / 0)
One part of Jack Hitt's article I found particularly disturbing is the following:

A policy that criminalizes all abortions has a flip side. It appears to mandate that the full force of the medical team must tend toward saving the fetus under any circumstances. This notion can lead to some dangerous practices. Consider an ectopic pregnancy, a condition that occurs when a microscopic fertilized egg moves down the fallopian tube -- which is no bigger around than a pencil -- and gets stuck there (or sometimes in the abdomen). Unattended, the stuck fetus grows until the organ containing it ruptures. A simple operation can remove the fetus before the organ bursts. After a rupture, though, the situation can turn into a medical emergency.

According to Sara Valdés, the director of the Hospital de Maternidad, women coming to her hospital with ectopic pregnancies cannot be operated on until fetal death or a rupture of the fallopian tube. "That is our policy," Valdés told me. She was plainly in torment about the subject. "That is the law," she said. "The D.A.'s office told us that this was the law." Valdés estimated that her hospital treated more than a hundred ectopic pregnancies each year. She described the hospital's practice. "Once we determine that they have an ectopic pregnancy, we make sure they stay in the hospital," she said. The women are sent to the dispensary, where they receive a daily ultrasound to check the fetus. "If it's dead, we can operate," she said. "Before that, we can't." If there is a persistent fetal heartbeat, then they have to wait for the fallopian tube to rupture. If they are able to persuade the patient to stay, though, doctors can operate the minute any signs of early rupturing are detected. Even a few drops of blood seeping from a fallopian tube will "irritate the abdominal wall and cause pain," Valdés explained. By operating at the earliest signs of a potential rupture, she said, her doctors are able to minimize the risk to the woman.

One doctor, who asked to remain anonymous because of the risk of prosecution, explained that there are creative solutions to the problem of ectopic pregnancies: "Sometimes when an ectopic pregnancy comes in, the attendant will say, 'Send this patient to the best ultrasound doctor.' And I'll say, 'No, send her to the least-experienced ultrasound doctor.' He'll say, 'I can't find a heartbeat here.' Then we can operate."

I just can't fathom how a weeks-old fetus is afforded such drastic medical intervention!  Not to mention the concept that the fetus is given a higher legal status than the woman!  It is more important to keep a doomed fetus alive than to keep the woman from medical risk.

In this country we are in the middle of all sorts of cost-containment measures in health care, that all sorts of children and adults don't get equivalent care to the above example of the fetus that will never make it to be a child...

Compare the costs of keeping the woman with an ectopic pregnancy in the hospital until the moment of fetal death/tubal rupture, with the cost of the procedure to remove the ectopic pregnancy in the first place.... and then compare the in-hospital costs (at the very least, care is described as a daily ultrasound + room & board) with the standard of care given to a post-partum mother and child!

-Emily
emilywynn.blogspot.com


by EmilyWynn8 on Tue Apr 11, 2006 at 01:49:31 PM EST

Precisely (none / 0)
Jack Hitt was interviewd by Rachel Maddow on Air America radio [audio link]. He compared the Salvadoran government's policy of (mis)managing ectopic pregnancies to hospitalizing a person with an inflamed appendix, but refusing to operate until the diseased appendix ruptures and the situation becomes a life-threatening emergency. That is no exaggeration.

Since early laparoscopic intervention in cases of ectopic pregnancy is a safe and relatively minor procedure that preserves a woman's future fertility, it is unconscionable to endanger her health and even her very life for the sake of an embryo that cannot possibly survive.  

"Life" matters, but not the woman who gives it.

by moiv on Tue Apr 11, 2006 at 08:49:45 PM EST
Parent

And ironically enough... (none / 0)
Ironically enough, waiting until the fallopian tube ruptures or the fetus dies to perform a removal of an ectopic pregnancy is almost guaranteed to destroy the future chances of a woman being able to carry to term successfully; at minimum, it cuts the chances of a successful pregnancy in future in half.  (Probably more than half, counting inflammation in the tubes.)

The dominionists' policies of "ZYGOTES UBER ALLES" and encouraging women to literally be breeders of "quiverfulls" of future "God warriors" (which is the real intent here) is in fact risking destroying fertility in case something goes wrong (like a tubal pregnancy).

One thing I am curious about, too, is the rate of uterine cancer in El Salvador.  (There is a particular type of uterine cancer--hyatidiform moles--which result from a pregnancy gone horribly, horribly wrong (essentially there is a major genetic error in the embryo from the time of fertilisation and the "embryo" begins invading the uterine tissue like a classical cancer).  In fact, because of it being essentially a zygote that turns cancerous (or, occasionally, placental tissue that turns cancerous--both being of embryonic origin) it's often termed a "molar pregnancy".)

Molar pregnancies are pretty much unable to be carried to term, and--if caught early enough--a D&C and a course of chemo can not only save a woman's life but her fertility.  In cases where a woman has tried to carry a "molar pregnancy" to "term" (for example, women who are anti-abortion, have a set of what would have been twins in which one of the "twins" has developed into a molar pregnancy, and who refuses an abortion) women have died from what becomes a very aggressive cancer if untreated.

I even speculated in a previous reply that dominionists would probably try to fight lifesaving treatment of ectopic pregnancies and molar pregnancies because a fetus might have to be aborted to save the woman's life.  This is unhappy confirmation of some of my musings in that reply.

by dogemperor on Wed Apr 12, 2006 at 10:26:11 AM EST
Parent


A repeat of the reply noted above (none / 0)
Here's the original commentary (and an addition in italics):

For that matter (whilst we're talking about things that can go naturally wrong with a pregnancy), what about ectopic pregnancy?  

Ectopic pregnancy is when a pregnancy develops in the fallopian tubes--if an emergency surgical abortion is not performed, the fallopian tubes usually burst (which is a lifethreatening emergency).  There is quite literally no way for a tubal pregnancy to make it to term, or often even to viability.

(Addendum: Unfortunately, in El Salvador we're getting confirmation that, yes, dominionists WOULD try to make women carry ectopic pregnancies to term.)

One wonders if the "every zygote is sacred" crowd would be happy to let women die in attempts to carry tubal pregnancies (strike that--I actually know for a fact they would).

For that matter, what about hyatidiform moles, or what is normally referred to as "molar pregnancy"?  

Molar pregnancy is a way in which pregnancy can go horribly, horribly wrong--it is, quite literally, a type of cancer that originates in either placental tissue or in embryos with certain severe chromosomal defects.  In other words--unlike practically all other cancers--it is a type of cancer that develops from a fertilised zygote whose development goes tragically wrong, and partial moles in particular can literally be described as embryo-based cancers.

Molar pregnancy not only can kill (from being a pregnancy related cancer) but in fact the massive hormonal disruptions (completely aside from the "if untreated it will invade your uterus, your other tissues, and kill you" aspect) can themselves be life-threatening.

The cure is a common abortion technique--a D&C--followed up with a course or two of chemo.  In the rare cases where there have been "twinned" pregnancies where one embryo develops normally and the other becomes a molar pregnancy, these have a much higher risk of metastasis and a bad outcome; in fact, the risk of death from cancer is so high that in these cases abortion (of both the healthy embryo and the molar pregnancy) is recommended as a lifesaving measure for the mother because there is just too much risk in trying to carry the healthy embryo to term (in fact, molar pregnancies can metastasize to their "twin", too).

Again, just like ectopic pregnancies, there is no way a molar pregnancy--even though it developed from a fertilised egg--will ever develop normally, and if one attempted to "carry it to term" it'd likely kill the mother in the process.

One wonders if every hyatidiform mole is sacred to dominionists :p


by dogemperor on Wed Apr 12, 2006 at 10:30:33 AM EST
Parent

Horrible scenario (none / 0)
since with molar pregnancies there's almost never a viable fetus, and therefore there really is no "term" in the commonly understood sense. Women with molar pregnancies usually begin to bleed and then spontaneously abort at some point, but of course the longer the pregnancy continues, the higher the risk for the development of choriocarcinoma -- which can metastasize rapidly into the lung and brain. I still remember a 16 year-old girl we saw several years ago who had been pregnant with a mole for only about 12 weeks, but whose uterus was as large as that of a woman with a six month pregnancy.

We had a patient with a suspected molar pregnancy only last Friday, and today the pathology report confirmed a complete hyatidiform mole. It was caught early, and with proper followup she can expect to avoid further problems, but I hate to think what might have happened to her in a "pro-life nation" with laws as rigid as El Salvador's.

by moiv on Wed Apr 12, 2006 at 09:37:36 PM EST
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You and me both (none / 0)
That makes two of us who are gravely concerned about stuff like that.  :P

The fact that now dominionists are even wanting to withhold antibiotics from women who've had an abortion doesn't reassure me on that end, either (I suppose they WANT women to die of septic abortions)?

(And yes, before anyone doubts, I've posted a report on it in my latest post to Talk2Action here.

by dogemperor on Thu Apr 13, 2006 at 09:12:42 AM EST
Parent

As you can see (none / 0)
from my comment on your diary, I don't doubt it for a minute. This isn't the first time I've known it to happen.

I think you're right about what they want: divine retribution, with bacteria standing in for His terrible swift sword.

by moiv on Fri Apr 14, 2006 at 02:13:27 AM EST
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By Frank Cocozzelli (80 comments)
Prince and DeVos Families at Intersection of Radical Free Market Privatizers and Religious Right
This post from 2011 surfaces important information about President-Elect Trump's nominee for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos. -- FC Erik Prince, Brother of Betsy......
By Rachel Tabachnick (218 comments)

Respect for Others? or Political Correctness?
The term "political correctness" as used by Conservatives and Republicans has often puzzled me: what exactly do they mean by it? After reading Chip Berlin's piece here-- http://www.talk2action.org/story/2016/7/21/04356/9417 I thought about what he explained......
MTOLincoln (253 comments)
Fear
What I'm feeling now is fear.  I swear that it seems my nightmares are coming true with this new "president".  I'm also frustrated because so many people are not connecting all the dots! I've......
ArchaeoBob (107 comments)
"America - love it or LEAVE!"
I've been hearing that and similar sentiments fairly frequently in the last few days - far FAR more often than ever before.  Hearing about "consequences for burning the flag (actions) from Trump is chilling!......
ArchaeoBob (214 comments)
"Faked!" Meme
Keep your eyes and ears open for a possible move to try to discredit the people openly opposing Trump and the bigots, especially people who have experienced terrorism from the "Right"  (Christian Terrorism is......
ArchaeoBob (165 comments)
More aggressive proselytizing
My wife told me today of an experience she had this last week, where she was proselytized by a McDonald's employee while in the store. ......
ArchaeoBob (163 comments)
See if you recognize names on this list
This comes from the local newspaper, which was conservative before and took a hard right turn after it was sold. Hint: Sarah Palin's name is on it!  (It's also connected to Trump.) ......
ArchaeoBob (169 comments)
Unions: A Labor Day Discussion
This is a revision of an article which I posted on my personal board and also on Dailykos. I had an interesting discussion on a discussion board concerning Unions. I tried to piece it......
Xulon (180 comments)
Extremely obnoxious protesters at WitchsFest NYC: connected to NAR?
In July of this year, some extremely loud, obnoxious Christian-identified protesters showed up at WitchsFest, an annual Pagan street fair here in NYC.  Here's an account of the protest by Pagan writer Heather Greene......
Diane Vera (130 comments)
Capitalism and the Attack on the Imago Dei
I joined this site today, having been linked here by Crooksandliars' Blog Roundup. I thought I'd put up something I put up previously on my Wordpress blog and also at the DailyKos. As will......
Xulon (331 comments)
History of attitudes towards poverty and the churches.
Jesus is said to have stated that "The Poor will always be with you" and some Christians have used that to refuse to try to help the poor, because "they will always be with......
ArchaeoBob (149 comments)
Alternate economy medical treatment
Dogemperor wrote several times about the alternate economy structure that dominionists have built.  Well, it's actually made the news.  Pretty good article, although it doesn't get into how bad people could be (have been)......
ArchaeoBob (90 comments)
Evidence violence is more common than believed
Think I've been making things up about experiencing Christian Terrorism or exaggerating, or that it was an isolated incident?  I suggest you read this article (linked below in body), which is about our great......
ArchaeoBob (214 comments)

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