Do you believe that a pharmacist who decides that ADD is an overdiagnosed and quite possibly entirely imaginary disorder has a right to refuse to fill Ritalin prescriptions?
The vast majority of fertilized embryos never implant in the uterus and are expelled during menstruation. That’s why the medical definition of “pregnant” relies on the fertilized egg having attached itself to the uterine wall.
The chain of command may not help in this situation. The warden in the prison where my husband works is the top authority in that facility, but he can’t make medical decisions. That’s the province of the doctors and the medical board and if they can’t be reached, there’s nothing that can be done.
Not always. If an inmate brings in a presription bottle, the staff would have to ensure that:
The pills in the bottle are really what the label says they are. It’s not unheard of to empty powder from capsules and fill them with another drug. Nor is your average staff person an expert in pill identification.
The inmate is taking the proper dosage at the correct time.
That the inmate is not dealing these pills out to others. There are a host of non-narcotic medications which are abused for recreational purposes. Beyond that, there are people out there who will take any unidentified pill in the hopes it might get them high.
That the pills can not be stolen from the inmate’s posessions.
Letting inmates have their own medications is a security nightmare and the majority of correctional facilities won’t do it.
If an inmate is admitted with a current prescription, they are sent to the prison/jail doctor to see if the reason for taking the medication is valid. (There are some doctors out there who are just glorified dealers, after all.) If it is, the doctor makes notes in the inmate’s chart and they are scheduled to come into the dispensary to get their medications. If, for some reason, the inmate has to have medication at times when the dispensary is closed, they may have the single dosage required in their posession. (Staff members are not allowed to dispense medication.)
Of course, these rules vary from institution to institution, but most facilities have security and safety as their top priorities.
The road to hell is paved with exceptions. Blanket policies are necessary for the smooth running of institutions which house thousands of people. Otherwise, the system grinds to a halt, deluged with suits and complaints that “You let Jane Smith do it! I want to do it, too! It’s not fair that you let her do it and not me! It must be racism/ageism/a conspiracy against me!”
Inmates are not denied medical care. In fact, they get much better care than they would as private citizens because they are wards of the state. All prisons and jails have procedures in place to deal with true medical emergencies. While I understand your point of view, I don’t think this particular case is an example of a failing prison medical system. The woman was in no immediate medical danger. She may not want to have a baby, but becoming pregnant is not a life-threatening issue.
That’s not true. Prisons override outside doctor’s directives all the time, especially in cases of elective medical procedures, such as sex changes. And technically, an emergency contraceptive would be an elective procedure.
Again, “Get that pill from my purse,” comes with a host of potential problems. Can the staff member identify that the pill is really Plan B, or is it a recreational drug or a cyanide capsule which will kill her when she takes it? (And lead to an enormous lawsuit which will be almost automatically decided in favor of the plantiff because policy was ignored.)
This is just the way things work. Policies are in place for a reason. They protect the staff members and the inmates, too. Sometimes, people have bad experiences because of them, but people never stop to think about how many bad things* didn’t* happen because policy was followed. Nor is one incident reason to toss out a policy which has worked just fine for years.
Frankly, when you give people discretion to decide that they don’t need to follow policy in this particular case, you’re giving license for mistakes to be made and some of those mistakes can be very dangerous or even fatal.
You know, I just hashed this out for multiple pages in GD, and I think I made my points pretty clear over there. This is really not germaine to this thread. I answered a few questions Kalhoun had, because she had brought up the pharmacist thread, but I think I’ll leave it at that.
I understand that completely, I don’t think the medical definition of “pregnant” has anything to do with what I said, and I was merely trying to give the POV of pro-lifers, for clarity’s sake, not argue what it means to be pregnant, or what an abortion is, or whether or not Plan B/IVF/IUDs actually cause them. The concern of pro-lifers isn’t necessarily about the medical definition of “pregnant” or specifically with abortion. As I said, the concern is with the embryo, and having a direct hand in its demise.
Assuming this wasn’t a case of religious fervor gone stupid, phones should have been ringing off the wall. A quick call to the hospital that prescribed that pill would clarify that it was, indeed necessary to follow doctor’s orders and protect the woman’s reproductive rights. It’s not their job to “think” about what the drug is. It’s their job to “act” on what the woman told them in a quick and responsible manner. Assuming she’s a lying drug abuser/suicide/whatever is not the way you serve a community; prisoner or not.
Lissa - there is a very important and qualtitative difference between prisons and jails - prisons (and their policies) are designed to securely confine prisoners for long periods of times. Jails, and their policies are designed to confine securely folks for shorter periods of time. This difference becomes crucial under the current discussion and makes your points about hubby’s prisons policies moot, at best.
there ain’t no fucking way in hell that a prisoner in a prison is going to suddenly come up w/pills, prescriptions that the prison isn’t aware of (and probably issued- obviously contraband is the exception).
For a jail, however, there’s any number of situations wherin some one picked up and housed, may indeed have in their possession prescription meds that must be dealt with, and immediately. And, because there may indeed often be an emergency type situation where you’ve picked up the guy, he’s got a prescription vial for nitro, and suddenly starts screaming to give him one, you bet your ass that any jail if they don’t have an “immediate what the fuck do we do NOW?” policy, should get one pronto.
This is an extreme fuck up on their part. Simple enough for the jail personnel to verify the script, that the pill involved is indeed the script, and since they arrested her on that old warrent, they’d better be damn sure it’s her in the first place. anything short of that is bullshit.
I didn’t read the GD thread. I’d be happy to, but I figured that it **is ** germane to this thread, what with the same points being brought up and all.
I think the medical definition of pregnant should be pretty relevant to a medical professional.
I understand, but I’ve been posting on that one for several days, and I just don’t feel up to making the same points again here. As I said, I answered some of Kalhoun’s questions out of courtesy, because she & I were both participating in the other thread, and I figured any questions she asked were because she wanted to clarify things I said over there.
If the concern was over pregnancy itself, then that is true. In this case, it isn’t.
that is simply not true. Medical decision in emergency or near-emergency situations don’t have to be made by the jail’s doctor, they just have to be made by a doctor. So if the jail doctor can’t be reached, it is the jail’s responsibility to take the inmate to the hospital or to another doctor – to do whatever needs to do to address their serious medical needs. In any event, the detention officer has covered his or her ass by bringing the potential problem to the attention of his or her superiors.
The determination of what drug is in the bottle should be made at intake, at the medical screening. The detention officer should have nothing to do with it. The jail should not be working under the assumption that the pills are phony as a justification for not giving them to the inmate, when the prescription clearly indicates they are to be administered. If there’s some question as to what is actually in the bottle, the detention officer needs to consult with medical staff. Again, just “not giving the inmate his medication” is not an option.
It’s listed on the bottle. If there’s some question – like she just brings in a loose pill – then, again, the detention officer talks to a medical person. In the worst case scenario, the detention officer can ask the inmate: “These are your insulin pills – how many are you supposed to take?” Is that ideal? No, of course not. But it’s preferable to withholding the medication.
This is a drug distribution/administration problem, which again does not justify withholding meds. You give prescribed drugs in prescribed doses only to the inmates for whom the drugs are prescribed, and you have the inmates swallow the drugs in your presence.
Except under circustances of allowed self-medication of non-narcotic drugs, like high-cholesterol drugs and OTC pain relievers (self-medication is allowed by some, but not all or even most detention facilities), no drug should be in the inmate’s possession. The bottle of pills is kept by the jail, which adminsters them as directed.
A jail doctor who second-guesses the prescription of a non-narcotic drug by another doctor puts his or her jail at significant liability risk. The health care obligations of a jail do not include discontinuing existing therapies, especially those for which the inmate already has, and has provided, medication. The exceptions to this would mostly be based on cost – it’s too expensive for the facility to maintain the treatment – but this is not generally a concern with the transient population of jails. Certainly it was not a concern here, where the girl needed a grand total of one pill.
This may be your understanding, but it is not necessarily correct. There are a number of med dispensing protocols, only some of which require the inmate to go the dispensary. More common is a med cart taken for cell to cell (in a small facility) or a cellblock med call to a central location for one pod or cell (in large facilities).
Again, this is not necessarily correct. Some jails do not allow self-medication of any type, under any circumstances. It is also not correct in every case that staff members are not allowed to administer – not dispense, which has a different meaning – medication.
The rules vary from institution to institution to such an extent that the rules as set forth in your post cannot be said to be how it is always done, or even generally done, though that may be your understanding. The facility’s top priorities of safety and security will not excuse failing to adequately address the inmate’s serious medical needs – especially when, as here, giving the girl her medication would not have presented any security risk at all.
The road to legal hell is paved in equal parts with no policy, bad policy, and lack of independent judgment even when we’re talking about good policy. If an inmate is in anyphalactic shock, should a detention officer who is prohibited by policy from administering medications fail to go get the epi pen and save his life? A detention officer, like any person in a law enforcement field, should be expected to evaluate a situation, to exercise independent judgment, and to understand when they are over their head and need assistance. This means when a woman says “Look, I was just raped and I need that second pill. It’s prescribed and I have to have it,” you don’t just say “No” or “The doctor isn’t here” or “medical decisions are made by committee” or “sucks to be you.” You pick up the phone, call your sergeant, and ask for guidance. Then at least if the wrong decision is made, it won’t be on your shoulders.
Inmates are denied medical care all the time. The jail’s obligation under the law is only to meet their serious medical needs – and the jail and the inmate will not infrequently disagree as to what constitutes a serious medical need, and as to what constitutes appropriate treatment. And the care they receive is not in fact better than what they would receive as private citizens, except to the extent that many could not afford any medical care, and “some” is better than “none.”
I wish this were true, but it isn’t. Even those that have policies in place do not necessarily have good policies in place.
It isn’t an example of any type of prison system; it happened in a jail. It certainly appears to be an example of when the jail failed, however. The woman had medication that she had been validly prescribed, that (this is an assumption) she brought with her, and that she needed for her health and welfare. Withholding that medication from her was not this jail’s shining moment.
It is true. Jails – not prisons – which tend to have a transient population and which do not provide long term medical care – override an outside doctor’s directives at their legal peril. And emergency contraception is not an “elective procedure,” it’s not any type of procedure – it was a medication she had been prescribed by a doctor to safeguard her health. The jail had no business and no justification withholding it. Jails and prisons do not generally allow elective medical procedures becasue they do not want to be responsible for the cost, and because they are by law only required to tend to the inmate’s serious medical needs.
Are you kidding me? You think the jail needs to be hugely concerned that people booked in will be toting around cyanide capsules? Look, this isn’t that hard. The person is booked in. The medication is found and secured. Hopefully, it comes in a bottle or other container with the prescription information on it. If it doesn’t, at intake or medical screening, the inmate is asked, “What is this?” Inmate explains: It’s my insulin/my heart medication/the second flipping dose of emergency contraception because I just got raped. The inmate is asked: “Where did it come from? Who prescribed it?” The intake officer or health care officer consults the PDR and calls the prescribing office to confirm the prescription. IF the inmate tells the jail, “I really need that medication” the jail is acting AT ITS OWN LEGAL PERIL to disregard that.
I think I have a pretty good handle on how things work, thanks. And it is not in all cases as you think it works, nor are the policy decisions you are defending in every case the smartest thing that could have been done, or the thing that should have been done, under the circumstances.
I don’t believe this. The detention officer does not decide that she doesn’t need to follow policy. The detention officer recognizes a situation which the policy hasn’t contemplated, or where following the policy will lead to a bad result, and the detention officer brings that problem to her superior immediately. That is not a license to toss meds to the inmates like trained seals from then on. I can’t overstate how many legal problems arise not from a lack of policy, but from a lack of independent judgment and communication among detention officers and their chain of command.
Policy cannot plan for every contingency. Detention officers need to recognize emergent or urgent situations that are not adequately addressed by policy and ask for guidance on how to proceed. It’s that simple.
And I can tell you that the importance of this cannot be overstated in a jail setting. With the resugence of communicable diseases like TB, the rise of infectious diseases like MRSA, and the importance of maintaining therapies for chronic diseases like HIV it is crucial that a jail be willing and able to work with inmates to make sure they get their necessary meds. And don’t even get me started on psych meds.
Excellent post, Jodi. Regardless of whether the guard withheld meds on religious or plain ol’ stupid grounds, it was wrong.
Well, this is my “bread and butter” stuff. Jail administrators have become so fixated on liability – and with good reason in our society – that they drill into their officers “You must follow policy; do not deviate from policy” because one of the chief legal grounds for a lawsuit for “failure to provide adequate medical care” is “failure to follow policy.”
But if you train your officers to the point that they believe they have no discretion to exercise independent judgment – even if only to the point of asking for help – then you end up with people slavishly following policy when the proverbial legal “reasonable person” would not have – i.e., when the need to do something different was so obvious that no reasonable person would have “just” followed policy. And then you’re looking at a lawsuit for that. IMO, it’s an example of the pendulum having swung too far in the other direction, when in fact in needs to be in the middle – good policy, yes, but also well-trained, alert, and reasonably intelligent jail workers who understand they have the right – and the obligation – to ask for help/escalate the issue if something doesn’t smell right.
In my state, we had a guy in a small jail who announced that he wasn’t drinking any more water because he was suicidal and wanted to die. So they followed the suicide protocols – put him in a paper gown, took away all the sharps, put him in an observation cell – and then watched him, carefully following policy by noting his condition periodically, until he died. As far as they could see, he never showed any distress and his case never became an “emergency,” like slashed wrists, blood all over the floor, and then, boom, the guy’s dead. “But we followed policy!” Maybe so – but you didn’t use your heads, you didn’t use the common sense God gave you, and no reasonable jury is going to find that your slavish devotion to the letter of policy excuses your inaction. You’d think it would not be that hard to just think for yourself, but honestly, they’re pretty well trained not to. That is IMO an example of overtraining, and it is counterproductive.
Itty bitty nitpick…insulin doesn’t come in pills (unfortunately), it must be injected. There ARE oral antidiabetic medicines, but they aren’t insulin. Insulin is destroyed in the stomach before it does any good. Otherwise I completely agree with Jodi, a little common sense can go a long way.
I wonder how this jail worker would have handled someone who needed her asthma inhaler RIGHT NOW? Or someone who was having a low blood sugar episode? Many psychiatric medicines need to be taken every 24 hours to be effective, and not taking certain medicines can send a patient into some rather unpleasant withdrawal symptoms.
More the fool I, then, for thinking that pro-lifers would be interested in a biological/medical definition of pregnancy and abortion.
Some days I think I understand the pro-life position. Surgical or chemical intervention to sever a growing fetus, which would otherwise grow into a living human, from the womb? Yeah, I can understand how some people can get squicky about that. And it is unclear when the special metaphysical and legal status we apply to attatch to humans should begin, given that infants and the comatose obviously qualify.
But I’m wrong. I don’t understand the pro-life position, because the pro-life position is fundamentally stupid. An unimplanted embryo isn’t anything. It’s a microscopic bag of nucleic acids and proteins, and will never become anything else. It isn’t a person. It isn’t a potential person. It’s a few cells. It has no more moral status than any random cell on my body, and arguably less, since my cells are components of a sentient being. And there’s a huge difference between *ending *a pregnancy and never starting one to begin with.
Yes, I realize this. My post was to provide some possible explanations for the jail’s actions. I don’t know their particular procedures, but I know that many institutions use procedures similar to those I mentioned.
Again, you’re talking about lifesaving medication versus what is essentially an elective procedure. If the woman was having a heart attack, you bet your bippy there would be a doctor racing to get her the treatment she needed.
Jails are busy places. In some places, hundreds of people may pass through in a day’s time. The medical staff don’t stand there while inmates are being admitted-- they’re busy treating patients, so summoning them down for hundreds of pill inspections a day isn’t really an option. There would have to be a doctor hired for this specific purpose and budgets are crunched as they are.
Instead, a lot of times what ends up happening is that they ask an inmate if there are any chronic conditions they have and then refer them to a doctor as needed. They’re not going to let an inmate die of insulin deprivation, but nor do many places feel it’s safe to allow the inmate to carry around syringes, either.
No, it really isn’t, because of liability issues. Frankly, there are a lot of people out there who take their medicines improperly. Just taking an inmate’s word for what he/she’s supposed to take and when is dangerous. If an inmate dies while under the state’s care and there was negligence involved (i.e, not following policy), there is guaranteed to be a massive lawsuit and people’s lives are going to be ruined.
People lie, too. “Are these your heart pills?” can be answered in the affirmative when it’s actually the case that the pills are an abused anti-anxiety medication. There are thousands and thousands of drugs on the market-- can every officer be expected to be able to identify each one? Who is going to pay for that training?
Many places do that exact procedure. They do not withold lifesaving medicines or treatment for chronic conditions. That is against the law. However, their doctors are under no obligation to continue the exact same treatment, especially if an alternate is available.
As a perfect example, there is a new drug used in the treatment of Hepititus B that is becoming widely used in the public. However, when an inmate is admitted to the prison in my area, s/he is given an different, older medication.
OTC medications can also be abused and can cause fatalities. They can be used to poison someone.
Not always. If they can provide a valid medical reason for their decision, they usually face no sanctions.
The obligation doesn’t include continuing therapies which the doctors decide are medically unecessary. An inmate with a bad back may have been seeing a chiropractor on the outside, but that doesn’t mean the state is obligated to provide one on the inside. Some people take non-traditional or homeopathic therapies for ailments-- prisons and jails are under no obligation to continue that. They are also not required to continue hormone therapy to further a sex reassignment procedure* or to give an inmate the exact same treatment /she used to recieve.
As I said, rules and procedures vary from institution to institution, as well as state to state.
If you’ll notice, I’ve said “some” and “many” quite a few times in my posts. I am fully aware (and have stated) that procedures vary. I know this because my husband was Deputy Warden of Special Services in a state prison (which is head of the medical department) and had the opprotunity to study how other institutions deal with these issues. (He even testified before a House sub-committee about it at one point.) He has also consulted for jails and juvenile detention facilites on revising their policies.
In an office, independant judgement is a good thing because, at most, you might pooch the Peterson deal or lose your job. In a prison or jail, we’re talking about people’s lives. You’re asking officers to take on the personal responsibility of ensuring that a medication is what it purports to be and that the inmate will, indeed, take it correctly. You’re asking them to trust that the person really needs the medicine and isn’t just abusing it or trying to sell it, or even to commit suicide or poison their cellmate.
Discretion also means the discretion to say “no.” Sometimes, that’s a good thing, but other times, it can be abused. What if an officer decides not to let any black inmates have the medicine they say they need? What if the officer decides that he won’t allow inmates to have certain medications for religious reasons? You’re putting a lot of power into their hands and also, a lot of responsibility. No-- it’s best to leave these decisions in the hands of professionals and not just take someone’s word for it.
How does he know that’s why the inmate is seizing? What if the guy is actually having a stroke and the epi pen contributes to his death? Without an encyclopedia on hand, I can’t tell you what the symptoms are-- I’ve never seen it before.
The procedures in many places is to call the emergency medical staff who decide what treatment is needed.
That last sentence is why individual discretion is not authorized. Because if the wrong decision is made by someone who is unqualified to make it, the blame falls on someone’s shoulders. There will be a lawsuit and there’s a good chance someone will be losing their job.
Calling the sergent was probably the first thing that this officer did. Then, the sergent probably said, “There’s nothing I can do. I’ll call the Major and see what he says.” Then, the Major probably said, “I can’t do anything about it. We have to call medical.” And medical probably said that there was nothing they could do about it because of policy issues.
I have a tough time believing that they simply ignored her plight. Likely, the phone lines were burning up as various staff members called around to see what could be done, but knowing that by the time a decision was made, it could be too late. Likely, new policies are already being written which adress these circumstances.
Quite true.
I should have made it clear I was referring to the majority of inmates who come from disadvantaged economic situations. Of course, a millionaire is going to have better treatment, but let’s be honest-- his odds of being there are less in the first place.
Inmates at the facility where my husband currently work recieve what I would decribe as a layperson as “average” care. They don’t get the latest ground-breaking treatments, but they do get the tried-and-true methods. An inmate going to the dentist, for example, won’t be getting Invisaline-- they’ll get the old-fashioned metal braces. Inmates can even recieve organ transplants in some states.
I don’t understand this comment. My husband audited dozens of prisons in my state. Every single one of them had policies in place which they were always updating and changing to make better. They may not have a specific policy which covers a medical emergency which is extremely rare in occurance, but that doesn’t mean that it proves their system is inherently flawed. I see a* hell *of a lot more flaws in “We’ll just trust your jugdement”.
You’re right-- it’s a jail, but jails and prisons face many of the same issues and so their policies often have a similar basis, adjusted for circumstance, of course.
I don’t agree that the jail should be condemned for their actions. There is no evidence that there was any malice intended and there are very valid reasons why it happened, the primary one being that the person who gave her the pill could have lost their job even if no ill effects came of it. They would have been guilty of violating policies-- policies which are there for a reason.
Policy isn’t something that was written 100 years ago and set in stone. It is something that’s always evolving. I guarantee you that all over the country, jails and prisons are looking at this issue and deciding whether they’ll allow Plan B to be dispensed to new arrivals who have the prescription. Sometimes it does take a “freak occurance” like this to make everyone see a potential area of concern. While I’m sorry this woman went through this, at least some good did come from the situation.
They do it all the time, so they must have figured out some way to avoid being sued over it.
Her health? Have you a cite on that? Had she told her doctor she was so distraught that her mental health was shattered over the idea of being pregnant? Did she threaten suicide? Did she have a medical condition which would make a pregnancy fatal?
Here’s something I wonder: Would a doctor order emergency contraception if the woman was unconcious, assuming she would want to prevent pregnancy? If so, that’s a hell of an assumption to make. What if she’s pro-life
If not, doesn’t that tell you something about my assertion that it is an elective? A doctor would give health-saving treatment to an unconcious woman, after all.
I don’t see any evidence her health was threatened. As a result, I assume that she had personal reasons for wanting to avoid pregnancy and as such, the prescription was an elective.
Again, if her health was not threatened by the pregnancy, the jail had no obligation to give her treatment. If a woman was arrested on the way to an abortion clinic, should she be allowed to have one in the jail?
No, but it’s wise to treat everything with suspicion. A little boy handing his dad a Twinkie in the visiting room may appear to be harmless and the staff may be looked on as hard-asses for forbidding it, but that’s because a toddler handed his father a snack cake concealing heroin a few years back.
No, cyanide is not the subject of concern, but it’s a possibilty, and maintaining security and safety in a jail or prison is often about considering all of those far-fetched possibilities.
Policy is often an all-or-nothing decision because exceptions make for exceptional headaches. Who is going to be responsible for vouching that the medication was legit and not another drug tampered with to make it look like something innocuous.
Who varifies that the contents match the lable? Who verifies that the John Smith listed on the lable is the John Smith who is now holding it? Who varifies that the sticker isn’t one he made up on his home computer?
Sounds simple, doesn’t it, but there are some practicalities which make it a little more complicated.
When I call my doctor’s office, it often takes them 24 hours to reply. That’s because their receptionist had to pull my records (which may not be located on site) and also deal with a hundred other tasks before returning my call. What does one do in the meantime?
I think I have a pretty good handle on how things work, thanks. And it is not in all cases as you think it works, nor are the policy decisions you are defending in every case the smartest thing that could have been done, or the thing that should have been done, under the circumstances.
And that supervisor calls their supervisor, who in turn calls their supervisor and then there’s meetings to discuss whether the policy change is necessary, then consultations with legal to make sure the policy meets the state’s guidelines and then it’s written up, changed a couple of times and implimented.
Not something easy to accomplish in 24 hours.
*There have been, though, a couple of cases where the courts have ruled that they must.
There is one extremely vital point that has been repeatedly made but overlooked here.
Lissa is defining, and defining rather well, what a prison policy as regards medical care is supposed to be – courtesy of her husband, who is something like deputy warden of one. But a prison is for the incarceration of convicted felons, persons sentenced to prison time after being found guilty of a crime in a court of law.
The woman in question, like all jailed persons in some states and a substantial percentage of people in the others, has been remanded to jail by an arrest warrant pending trial. She is no more guilty of a crime in the eyes of the law at the time of her arrest than are Lissa or Jodi – she has been charged with a crime, is almost certainly entitled to release on bail or on her own recognisance until trial, and is locked up until a judge sets bail or grants her ROR. (Only certain heinous crimes like first degree murder and obvious flight risks are denied bail, though it may be set at a virtually unpostable level for other serious crimes.)
Ordinarily the distinction between arrested persons incarcerated in lieu of bail and awaiting trial, and those convicted of a crime and sentenced to jail time, is relatively negligible. But this is one of those cases where it is not. Following the best set of prison procedures in the country when running a jail for persons incarcerated before trial is a dead-sure way to find yourself in legal hot water, because the circumstances are different.
In the two states I’m familiar with the law enforcement procedures for: 1) In New York there is a sergeant on duty at all times; 2) In North Carolina there is a magistrate present at or summonable to the jail, residing nearby. If a newly incarcerated person claims to need a medication which she brought to the jail and which was put in her personal effects, he has the right to rule on that in accordance with prescribed procedure. If necessary, he can take a statement from her under oath to the effect that, yes, that is a pill prescribed to prevent conception due to having been raped, and she needs to take it now. And then authorize it.
I hate to invoke Godwin, but “I was following official policy,” is only a very short step from “I was just following orders.” And we refused to acquit Germans after WWII who used the latter defense to justify having participated in atrocities.
Thank you, but allowing a woman to get pregnant as a result of rape for either religious or bureaucratic reasons to deny her an already-prescribed-and-in-her-possession medicine is not justifiable for any reason whatsoever.
Ditto. And I’d add that if all these “what ifs” come up as Lissa has described, even more reason to make it SOP to have a doctor on staff as part of the daily intake process. Face it…if the woman’s health care and rights were being considered, this never would have happened. Just because a lot of people wig out and attempt suicide, bring in contraband, or otherwise try to sidestep the system doesn’t mean that those with true medical needs should routinely fall through the cracks while The Stooges play doctor. Their obligation is to do everything in their power to make sure the medical needs are met, particularly when those needs were identified and addressed outside the confines of the jail.
There is no moment of conception, and embryos that fail to implant on anything will not continue to develop into fetuses. Egg and sperm aren’t enough to make a baby: a woman’s body is a necessary ingredient in the process, and without it, you do not have even a potential human being. It’s only potential is potential to be implanted in tissue and THEN develop.
Educate me, then. I say that the moment a zygote exists – that is, the diploid cell formed immediately following the combination of the two haploid cells – conception has ocurred. That’s the moment of conception.
As the article describes it…well, lemme quote the part I find interesting:
So, the timeline sounds like this: woman reports rape. Officers take woman to rape crisis center. There, she is almost certainly given a rape exam and Plan B. The officers then put the woman in their car and drive around looking for the location where the rape occurred. While driving around, the officers discover that she had the 2003 warrant, at which point she is arrested and taken to jail by those same officers.
So, unless they pulled a switch at some point, the officers who arrested her, and who therefore took her to the jail, were the very same officers who took her to the crisis center in the first place. Meaning, they were present when she was given the medication that ended up causing so much fuss, and she never left their custody. Therefore, they had to know that the pills were legitimate. Could those officers not have informed the jail that she was supposed to have this medication?
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
Not necessarily. They likely didn’t search her beforehand, so she may have had other pills on her person. Nor were they necessarily present during every part of her treament. They may not know whether she was given Plan B or not.
Yes, I know she was in a jail. As I said, I know their policies are different-- hell, policy varies from institution to intitution even if the same security range. However, all of these facilities face similar problems and their policies often have a similar basis. (And, I noted that my husband’s experience in these matters is not limited only to prisons.)
What I was trying to give in my posts is reasons why the jail may have acted as they did and why such policies exist.