I’d suspect that withholding medical care from a prisoner may be a criminal offense.
I just read the article on CNN:
Let’s not crucify the jail worker just yet.
Yeah, that would change everything. I was assuming ( :smack: :: smacks self ::) that the detention officer had medical orders to give the woman the drugs and she disregarded them. In the absence of medical orders and in the absence of an emergency, she can’t give any drug (except, in some jails, OTC things like aspirin) to any inmate. Although in this case, if the inmate told me just what pill it was and why she needed it, I sure as hell would be on the phone urgently punting the issue up my chain of command.
Agreed on all counts!!!
If I recall correctly, the standard for what qualifies as adequate medical care in detention facilities is incredibly low – “extreme indifference” low.
Absolutely, but it sure makes me wonder why the initial reports were that the drug was denied the prisoner because it conflicted with the guard’s religious views. I guess it shouldn’t make me wonder, but it does.
Media bias, perhaps? 
Yeah, I’m not saying I now thing CNN is right. But conflicting reports = reserving judgment until more is know. But we can certainly wonder in the meantime. 
What about people screaming at you or building a human chain or touching you in any way as you try to pass?
Of course, I would consider all of that way out of line.
I assumed you would. Both scenarios are examples of interference with a woman’s right to medical care. I just don’t see how you can draw a distinction between the two.
You know, I’m not sure it really matters to me too much that the medicine was withheld out of laziness versus religious beliefs (although I admit that the latter makes my little atheist brain explode). If the guard knew the prisoner needed medication (and, good grief, you’d think the circumstances surrounding this mess would have made a difference), she should have been on the phone as soon as she knew the need. Would this have happened if it was someone needing heart medication or insulin? There must be a plan in place for cases like this - I can’t believe there isn’t. Bring on the lawyers.
As would I, but there are other considerations at work.
Medical services for prisons and jails sometimes operate like HMOs. Only certian drugs and procedures are “covered” or authorized under the policies. If another treatment is needed, there is a board or committee which meets and decides whether to allow it or not. In this particular jail, Plan B may not be part of their medical policy, which means the drug might not even be in the dispensary, and they can’t just pop down to the pharmacy to buy it.
If there is no policy in place, there’s really nothing the staff could do. Because of the nature of their jobs, they’re often not authorized to make medical decisions, even ones which seem obvious to a layperson. If the woman didn’t have the drug on her person when she was arrested, there might have been no way to acquire it, and even if she did, they may be prevented by policy from allowing her to have it. By the time things were done “by the book” and the board met and decided in her favor, the time window would probably already have passed.
It’s not necessarily an oversight on the jail’s part that a policy addressing this may not exist. It’s a rare circumstance when a woman in a jail or prison would need Plan B. Of course, it is always a possibility that a sexual assault might be perpetrated on an inmate by a male staff member or visitor or could have been assaulted immediately prior to admission, so it’s something that the prisons/jails should consider when writing policy.
It does still raise the question, “Why wasn’t this woman given permission to take her medication.” If the guard simply said, “Sorry, I don’t have any orders about that,” and didn’t take any further action on it, then she’s still just as culpable. If she did try to get further authorization, then responsibility passes to whoever was supposed to give permission for the woman to take her pills, but didn’t. It’s still a very bad situation here, even if it’s not clear who’s at fault just yet.
I disagree. An abortion is the termination of a pregnancy after, accompanied by, resulting in, or closely followed by the death of the embryo or fetus.
As I understand it, the woman already had the drugs. She had taken one dose and needed to take the second dose. So this almost certainly would not be a situation in which the drug had to come from the dispensary – it would have to come from her personal effects, because it would have been taken from her at booking. But she also should have received a medical screening at intake, at which the jail should have been made aware of the problem and the need for her to timely receive the second dose. Unsure what to do at that point? Activate your chain of command. Not to mention that in an emergency situation the absence of the necessary drug from the jail’s formulary will not be a defense – they need to provide whatever medical care is necessary. Was this an emergency? Arguably not, but I wouldn’t want to try to defend the jail at that point.
What they can do, and should do, is escalate the matter up the chain of command, if for no other reason than to cover their own asses.
There should be no policy in place that prevents an inmate from taking prescribed medication that he or she brings into the jail with a valid prescription bottle that indicates who prescribed it, the dosage, and when to give it – unless the medication is a opiate painkiller or other narcotic painkiller, some jails have blanket policies that narcotics are simply not allowed in their facility. What this means, practically speaking, is that anyone is such pain as to require a narcotic must be taken to the hospital. A policy that separates inmates from their medication in some blanket fashion is a very bad policy.
The jail cannot be so regimented and dedicated to doing things “by the book” that it ignores the serious medical needs of its inmates and fails to provide timely and adequate medical care. It’s legal duties to the inmates must trump its procedures, and the policies should be flexible enough to acknowledge that time-sensitive medical issues are bound to arise, which cannot wait to be decided by board or committee.
The issue isn’t which medication it was; the issue is that she wasn’t given her medication. There is no point at which “It’s our policy to not distribute that drug” should trump her physician’s directive that she receive it – unless it can reasoanbly be substituted by a generic, or unless the jail will take the steps necessary to make sure she has a way to get the medication it won’t give her, like taking her to a hospital. Again, it is not my understanding that the situation was that she was asking the jail to provider her with Plan B, but that she was only asking the jail to give her her own Plan B. It would be highly unlikely the doctor would have given her one dose to take but then not given her the other to take later, since the treatment requires two doses.
But the woman is not pregnant until the zygote implants itself on the uterine wall. Zygotes slip out without implanting with a surprising frequency. IVF patients are often given multiple embryos with the expectation that many or most of them will not implant and survive. A woman with a fertilized egg in her fallopian tube or unimplanted in her uterus is no more pregnant than a woman with embryos in a freezer.
Do you have a similar problem with IUDs? Unlike Plan B, their sole method of action is to prevent implantation. Or IVF, which as I mentioned before also is inefficient in how many embryos are implanted.
You may think it’s too fine of a distinction, but to me it’s as wide as the Pacific Ocean. I see the pharmacist as having a right not to PERSONALLY be involved in providing Plan B. I do not believe the pharmacist, or anyone else, has any right to impede someone from doing something that is perfectly legal which they have no personal involvement in. So, the pharmacist, IMO, has the right not to provide Plan B himself, but he can’t lock somone in his store to keep them from going somewhere else to get it (a better example, though irrelevant in this case would be a pharmacist who confiscates a prescription). Likewise, I don’t think that anyone has an obligation to assist in someone procuring an elective abortion, but I also don’t think they have the right to impede someone from getting one by physical restraint or whatever.
The actions you describe would be illegal even if they had nothing to do with abortion. You can’t threaten or physically assault someone on the street if they are involved in a legal activity. You CAN choose not to be involved with abortions in any way, even as a medical professional.
The pro-life concern is for the embryo itself, not wherever it happens to be located.
Many (perhaps most) pro-lifers would not use an IUD or have IVF, exactly for the reason that embryos are created but not implanted.
Personally, I would never use an IUD or have IVF for this reason. With Plan B, the theoretical chance of implantation prevention would keep me from using that, as well (although as I said over in the pharmacist thread, I don’t know if that theoretical chance would be enough for me to get overly concerned about other people using it).
No, they don’t. The nuttiest don’t make any exceptions, including the life of the mother. Some of them even gloat over it; Randall Terry was quoted in Time magazine as saying “Every woman who dies is a victory for morality”.