And who sets these guidelines? That is my question, one that you have kicked the can down the road on. The medical directors are going to need to know what the criteria are, and the ACOG will as well.
The doctor may be able to tell whether it is a 90%, 50%, or 10% chance, but he cannot tell which of those is acceptable without actual guidance from the community that is demanding this of him.
So, stop trying to pawn off your responsibility on another, you are the one who wants this sort of legislation, you are the one who want others to follow your moral code, you must now actually give a straight answer as to what probability is acceptable? This is not going to be set by doctors, not without input from politicians, anyway.
If you cannot give a straight answer to what chances you consider to be acceptable, then you shouldn’t be advocating for others to make that decision for you.
But, as no one actually knows what criteria we are operating under, we don’t know if is an extreme case until they are on trial.
I thought you were saying that as an anti-abortion advocate.
Not normally, but it happens. Should this mother be required to give her skin to her child?
Yeah it breaks down to where it is no longer relevant. For ages and ages we’ve had wet nurses for women who didn’t want to deal with breastfeeding, we have never had surrogate uteri for women who don’t want to deal with being pregnant anymore.
I think a “reasonable chance” of survival, or alternatively “near-certainty” that the already-born child will die, is enough for the state board/ACOG. I could name an arbitrary percentage such as 90% or 95% but these don’t help a doctor at all during an individual case - doctors don’t go around saying “you have a 90% chance of coming down with this disease”, they say “people in similar situations have a 90% chance of coming down with this disease, and I’m near-certain that you will too because this, this, and this”. There is considerable variety of symptoms and prognosis within populations affected by any given condition, and just about every medical guideline has a catch-all exception for the reasonable judgement of the good doctor.
By extreme, I meant the doctor has already had his or her license revoked due to the same procedure.
I think I was thinking about a situation where the child is birthed, not aborted, but needs an organ transplant to survive. Yeah, sometimes I am confused myself.
I draw the line at what is expected. Unless that lady knew that her potential baby would “near-certainly” require skin grafts, I don’t think it’s right to punish her for it - her rights to her own skin trumps the kid’s claim on her skin. For more serious transplants or if the mom has a condition (such as immunodeficiency) we can’t force the mother to risk death. That being said, if she just left the kid to die without even making phone calls or asking around for help - if she does not make a reasonable effort to provide for the needs of her child - then I reserve the right to judge her behavior. Failing to provide her own skin or pay for an expensive operation is not, in my opinion, morally reprehensible.
Don’t you see what I meant though? Just uh, ignore all the parts of the analogy that don’t work, then it works :D. Pregnancy is sort of unique, isn’t it?
No, what the say is “in cases like yours, X% had this outcome”. If they are talking about cancer, and someone says the doc said they had 6 months to live, what the doc actually said was, “With cancer at this stage, the 6 month survival rate is under 50%.”
The do understand and use statistics all the time. What they do not understand or have any use for are undefined criteria.
So, the doc says to the woman, “Women with your condition have X% chance of bringing the child to term.”
I am asking, because it will need to be defined by someone, what that X is. If you don’t want to define it, that’s fine, just don’t try to impose arbitrary and ambiguous standards on the medical community.
So, because they were operating without a license? Sure, that’s prosecutable right now.
But how did they lose their license? Because others decided that their judgement wasn’t good enough, and substituted their own and penalized the doc.
Don’t you at least see how this is going to make the doc err on the side of not performing the medical procedures that are needed for the health of the mother?
Pregnancy isn’t all that unique. Go down south, adn there’s a decent chance that you could become host to a botfly larva.
Well by definition any percentage will be arbitrary… how about 5%? that’s standard clinical statistical significance. I’m not a doctor and would prefer doctors to have the debate.
So let’s say your doctor tells you people with your condition have a 97% chance of giving birth to a child who will need skin grafts. According to the proposed law, you are free to have that child but it is your responsibility to ensure that the child gets the skin grafts - either you provide the donor tissue or you find donor tissue or you can face a fine. If the baby dies because you didn’t provide donor tissue, you can be charged with gross negligence.
No, because other doctors decided the original judgement wasn’t good enough, substituted their own, and penalized the doc by stripping away his or her medical license and referring the matter to criminal court.
No, I don’t. Doctors already have to worry about getting their license revoked and possible criminal charges for medical malpractice. I’m not adding any extra liability for the doctor, not in this thread at least.
If the doctor says the mother is nearly-certain to give birth to a deformed child, and she knew this before having sex, and she did not take reasonable precautions such as contraceptives or abortion, in my opinion she deserves to be on the hook.
The doctor isn’t doing anything differently. Well I guess now the doctor is telling the woman that she’s on the hook whereas before it would have just been “in cases like yours, X% had this outcome”.
Let’s say the law and that situation came to pass, then the woman is in court and claims “Oh well the state should pick up the bill and it’s not my fault the kid was born without skin even though I knew it would happen”. What is her defense? A right to have sex without consequences?
This is not a medical matter. This is a matter of public policy. A doctor can tell you if a procedure is safe, and they can tell you the odds, but they cannot tell you what to do. In this case, there is a law telling them what to do.
So, you are settling on 5%. So, if a woman has a 94% of miscarrying a child, then you are willing to let those 18 babies die to let her have one? Mighty generous of you.
And if it was just 94%, then you’re off scott free.
Yes, they second guessed the doctor’s judgement, as I said would happen if you do not give them actual guidelines and criteria.
If a patient dies, and a doc can show that he followed all the guidelines, then he will not be in any trouble.
If someone is second guessing his decision to perform an abortion he saw as medically necessary, and there are no guidelines, then how does he have any way of telling whether he did the right thing?
And your near certain percentage is pegged at 95%, right?
Doctor and a lawyer. Can she get a second opinion? If the first doc says 96%, but she goes shopping for one that says 94%, does that second opinion get honored, or is it only the higher?
Well, her defense against a law that treats her body as a part of state property, she has no defense. She is not a person with rights, she is an incubator owned by the state. I am saying that we should avoid making laws that would put a woman in such a position in the first place.
And, to be honest, I think that this kid should never have been delivered, and should have been putout of its misery. It is going to live for a few years at most, in pain and never being able to touch anyone for fear of damage or infection, and it, and society, would be best off had it been euthanized at birth if not sooner.
Near-certain is not pegged at 95%. I’m pretending that I looked at extensive aggregate data, and was qualified to render an opinion that for one particular condition, the data shows 95% occurrence and I consider that to be near-certain. Then the other doctors on the board agreed with me, and we promulgated a rule saying for this particular condition the woman is on the hook. This process could even take place before the law is enacted, and that particular condition written into the law: “if a woman should be diagnosed by her current doctor with such conditions as X, Y, or Z, she shall be responsible for obtaining donor skin for any children born to her or face a misdemeanor…”
She can get a second opinion and she gets to pick whose diagnoses stick. But that’s not how it works with the percentages.
Her body isn’t state property and I don’t see how you came to that conclusion. She is being penalized for gross negligence that endangering the health of her future child. It’s not immediate, but it’s certain and foreseeable and preventable and has a well defined period between the act and the consequences.
I would endorse all of these, plus hiring an army of social workers who are expert in childrearing to help such mothers learn parenting and coping skills.