Quickies

Skepchick Quickies 2.16

Amanda

Amanda works in healthcare, is a loudmouthed feminist, and proud supporter of the Oxford comma.

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22 Comments

  1. “If they leave your practice, they’re probably going to gravitate toward another practice with unhealthy practices.”

    Sadly, this was my first thought. Turning anti-vaxxers away from real clinics is going to send them straight to woo clinics. That just isn’t fair to the poor kids of these nutjobs. If anything, staying in a pro-vac practice would at least give them a chance to be educated by actual doctors.

    That said, if I was someone who had a young baby that couldn’t be vaccinated yet, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to share the waiting room with someone who refused to vaccinate their kid because of bullshit info.

    1. Yeah I have mixed feelings about this. I understand if you want to prevent some parents misinformation leading to actual harm to other children, but I feel bad for the kids who are gonna end up getting medical care from quacks. :-/

      1. I feel the same way. Although I wouldn’t like having a doctor that is willing to turn me away upon the fact that they don’t like my personal choices, I wouldn’t want my kids being harmed by other patients in communal spaces.

  2. One other thing that gets left out of discussions about “Catholic” institutions is that many people who work at them are not Catholic, or Christian at all. Try running a large hospital with no atheist, Jewish, or Hindu doctors. I assure you, that would greatly reduce your pool of potential hires in many areas/specialties. So how can the Catholic Church pretend moral authority over such employees?

    Also, LGBT people: Catholic Charities are lobbying against civil unions in my state (CO), because they want to refuse to recognize same-sex couples and their children as constituting a family. (Not only with respect to adoption, but also by barring the children of such families from Catholic schools.) Is there really any doubt about what the Church is seeking? It’s not about individual conscience, but about lobbying the state to recognize the Vatican as a moral authority, one that’s somehow above and beyond the *actual* obligations of democratic government (such as equal protection of the law, protecting citizens from prejudice, impartiality between conflicting religious groups, aka secularism…).

    If this was about freedom of conscience, bishops wouldn’t be lobbying the state, they’d be trying to win back that 70+% of birth control using Catholics. Of course, this part of the problem is the Catholic attitude towards guilt and blame. It’s not OK to promote condoms that could save thousands or millions from AIDS, because birth control is wrong. That’s because if you encourage people to use condoms, then you did something bad, and that’s a sin. But if you encourage people not to use condoms, you did something good. And even if you agree that millions of people are suffering and dying needlessly, you’re supposed to rest easy at night, because, at least /you/ didn’t give them AIDS /directly/.

    Much like the Church has taught that doctors can perform life-saving procedures on women when abortion is an unfortunate probable by-product… But that they should not perform an abortion that is itself a life-saving procedure, even if the fetus is certain to die anyway. The rule of thumb seems to be: anything that’s “bad”l that you intended to happen is sinful, but anything bad that was caused by your actions, and that you knew would probably happen, but was just a side-effect of something “good” you were doing, anything like that is OK. So we have these bizarre justifications about how the Church can inflict unlimited, deliberate pain and misery upon however many people it wants, as long as its stated intentions are about something very pious, which just happens to involve wreaking havoc as an unfortunate common side-effect.

    (And people wonder how I can call myself a utilitarian…)

    1. Oh for the love of crutches. Patriarchy, indeed. :/

      I would absolutely love to know (and this could be confirmation bias on my part), why it seems like the last couple of years have been such a fucking War on Women (contraception, abortion, etc). It really does seems like the assfaces have been a LOT more prolific these last couple of years than the 20 or so years preceding. :/

      1. Two words.

        MORAL MAJORITY

        They weren’t either but when Herr Reagan welcomed them into the fold he didn’t realize that he was opening the seventh seal. Or maybe he did and didn’t give a shit, that would surprise me at all.

        And yes, a Biblical metaphor. Deal with it. ;)

      2. It’s not your imagination:

        REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH CARE FACTS:

        In 2011, 135 measures on reproductive health were passed by 36 US states
        There was a 50 per cent rise in reproductive health provisions in 2011 compared to 2010
        Sixty-eight per cent of reproductive health measures in 2011 restrict access to abortion
        Ninety-two provisions enacted in 24 states restrict access to abortion
        Republicans rule most states where abortion restrictions were enacted
        The Republican majority in the US House wants greater limits placed on abortion
        House Republicans have launched a probe into Planned Parenthood
        Komen cited the House probe of Planned Parenthood while halting funding
        Most Republicans oppose government funding of Planned Parenthood
        Republican candidates have pledge to de-fund Planned Parenthood
        All four candidates for the Republican nomination for the presidency have opposed abortion rights

        http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/02/2012278515825563.html

          1. Yeah, today’s been a pretty shitty day for women in the US. :/ I’m actually just very tired. Normally, I’m able to rustle up the righteous indignation, but today? It’s just depressing. :/

    1. The hardest part is trying to decide which section of the table to start eating at… The start of the table has gases like helium and hydrogen, which may fill you up to quickly, but the more radioactive elements may make me sick before I can eat very far anyway.

  3. I’m seriously loving those cupcakes. I’m glad they were at the end of the post to cheer me up!

    The contraception issue, sadly, doesn’t surprise me. One of the reasons I have no interest in ever returning to live in Ireland is the amount of control exerted over the country by the Catholic Church. The utter contempt for women is evident in how the country treats rape victims in particular. What annoys me the most about these people is their utter hypocrisy. They can quite easily justify their particular cherry picked beliefs while utterly condemning people who don’t conform to their idea of being a good Catholic. It annoys me that people like that are able to control other people’s choices.

    Regarding the unvaccinated children… it’s a difficult one. I feel terrible for the children themselves, who don’t have a choice in the matter, but should I ever have a child I would be terrified of them catching a vaccine preventable disease at the doctor’s office. I caught whooping cough as an infant and it nearly killed me. This was the height of the 80s whooping cough vaccine scare. Due to being on high dose steroids to control my brittle asthma, I could not be vaccinated. It is the people like that we need to protect. Immunocompromised people are the ones who NEED protection with herb immunity. It annoys me to no end to have antivax people exploit this. I would consider moving practice if I found out my doctor allow antivax people in their waiting room. At the very least, they should have to wear face masks to prevent the spread of possible infection. They are the ones who made this decision. They should be inconvenienced by it, not others.

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