Oooooooklahoma

For those who know me personally, I'm pretty obviously ensconced in the more liberal end of the political spectrum. (For those who don't know me personally, you probably figured that out if you read the whole health care debacle post a while back.) And from that stance and from my position as a woman and a future physician, I was incredibly sad today to learn of the legislation passed by the Oklahoma state senate which blatantly infringes upon individual freedoms represented by a woman's right to choose.

I'll preface this by saying that while I am definitively pro-choice, I am not in any way pro-abortion. I understand the point of view of my colleagues who believe that there should be laws protecting those who cannot protect themselves--and I don't believe that anyone, really, would willingly end an unborn life without first going through an incredibly difficult and painful decision. But while I don't necessarily believe that I personally would choose abortion, I have always believed that it is vital that in a free country women have a right to choose what to do with their bodies. If we tell a woman that she is not allowed to seek an abortion (or even to consider the option), we are in essence removing a piece of her personhood. We are telling that woman that the government knows better than she does about what is good for her, her family, and any theoretical future child she may bear. We are taking away her freedoms.

What the Oklahoma law says is that now in order to have an abortion in the state, a woman must have an ultrasound of her fetus. Not only that, but the doctor or technician performing the ultrasound must turn the screen so that the woman can see it, and must describe for the woman (presumably whether or not she wishes to know) the fetus's body parts and organs in detail. The object of this procedure, obviously, is the idea that if a woman learns this information she will be less likely to choose abortion. What it amounts to, essentially, is the government stepping in to coerce upon a vulnerable person at a difficult time a decision that conservative leadership finds appealing, rather than truly allowing a person to make a decision based on what is best for them (or, perhaps, even their baby). I doubt Republican senators in Oklahoma consider the fact that when a 16 year old mother of three who lives in an abusive household chooses to have an abortion, she might actually be considering that it would be better for a child to simply not be born into that world where it could not be cared for and protected. But I digress.

The part of this bill that I personally find the most appalling is a clause wherein doctors are protected from malpractice suits if they choose not to disclose birth defects to a mother with the intent of dissuading her from having an abortion. In essence, here's what that means. Let's say I'm pregnant (I'm not, by the way. Didn't want to freak anyway out or anything.). Let's say that my husband and I have decided that if the baby has a debilitating genetic defect (for example, trisomy 18--a terrible disorder that usually kills in utero, but for those babies who make it to term generally kills within a few hours or days) we will choose to abort. Let's say that I inform my obstetrician that I'd like to have prenatal testing done with the intent of discovering if the child has trisomy 18. We have the test, which comes back positive for trisomy 18. Now let's say that my obstetrician is vehemently pro-life, and chooses not to disclose to us the results of the test because she believes that we should not have an abortion. In almost every state, this kind of non-disclosure is considered a violation of patients' rights, and my husband and I would be able to sue for malpractice. In Oklahoma, we would now have no recourse to sue the physician for failing to disclose the information as a result of her pro-life stance. This, to me, is unconscionable. I may not agree with every decision my future patients make--in fact, I will probably disagree with many of them, including the decision of patients to smoke, drink, do drugs, have unprotected sex, eat Burger King for every meal and gain 500 pounds just to name a few. But I am in no way allowed to restrict those patients' access to information about their health simply because I do not agree with their decisions about what to do with their bodies.

I truly hope that the law gets overturned, and that those who are pro-life realize that they cannot dictate morality to the masses. In fact, when they do so, they destroy a little bit of the fabric that makes us truly American--our freedom to make our own choices, even if others (especially governments) disagree. Unfortunately, I don't see that happening any time soon.

In closing, I'll leave you with one of my most favorite quotes of all time:

American isn't easy. American is advanced citizenship--you gotta want it bad. It's gonna say, "You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who's standing center stage and advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours. You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of your country can't just be a flag; the symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then, you can stand up and sing about the "land of the free".

--Andrew Shepherd in The American President