Below is today’s column on common talking point among Democratic members and pundits on how the recent Dobbs decision will present a barrier to women seeking treatment for ectopic pregnancies. It is not only legally and medically false but it is dangerous if women actually believe what they are hearing or reading from these figures. There are ample grounds for pro-choice advocates to oppose the decision without spreading alarm over a danger that does not exist.
Here is the column:
After the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a common rallying cry for pro-choice advocates has been the endangerment of women with ectopic pregnancies who would now be barred in some states banning or severely limiting abortion services. Reps. Judy Chu, Jan Schakowsky, and others have insisted that women with such pregnancies are now without protection. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even used the issue to justify hounding and harassing justices eating in public in reference to a recent incident involving Justice Brett Kavanaugh at a restaurant with his wife: “Poor guy. He left before his soufflé because he decided half the country should risk death if they have an ectopic pregnancy within the wrong state lines.” These views have been amplified by academics like Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe. It is a great talking point but it just happens to be untrue as both a legal and medical matter. Worse yet, this common claim could be putting women physically at risk by suggesting that they might be legally at risk if they seek such treatment.
There are obviously good-faith objections to the Dobbs decisions on the underlying constitutional interpretation. However, critics have created a parade of horribles that extend beyond that opinion, including arguments expressly rejected by the Court. That includes President Biden who has repeatedly suggested that contraceptives and travel for women could be now curtailed under the decision.
The majority expressly and repeatedly rejected the application of this holding to these other rights. It stressed “intimate sexual relations, contraception, and marriage” are not impacted by its holding because “abortion is fundamentally different.” The court and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrence return to the point again and again: “Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Only Justice Clarence Thomas suggested that these other cases should be examined. Yet even Thomas stressed this opinion expressly rejects that application.
However, the ectopic pregnancy talking point is not just false, it is dangerous. These pregnancies can be life threatening and must be addressed as soon as possible. These interventions are not abortions and even restrictive states expressly state so.
When a pregnancy implants in the fallopian tube, it is not a viable pregnancy but it creates a potentially fatal risk for the mother from tubal rupture and internal bleeding. Treating such woman is not an abortion of a viable pregnancy. Indeed, as noted in a recent column, the procedures are vastly different, including the fact that “mifepristone and misoprostol, used commonly to provide medical abortions, specifically do not treat a pregnancy outside of the uterus.”
This is reflected in some of the most restrictive laws. For example, Oklahoma’s law expressly states “An act is not an abortion if the act is performed with the purpose to . . . remove an ectopic pregnancy.” Texas, Louisiana, and other states have the same express exemption. However, even if the law were silent on ectopic pregnancies, it is doubtful that the courts would ignore the medical and factual classifications to treat such emergency procedures as abortions or ignore that the mother’s life is in danger without medical intervention.
Yet, women would not know that in listening to leaders or reading news accounts. In the New Yorker, Jia Tolentino explained “abortion bans will hurt, disable, and endanger many people … who encounter medical difficulties…One woman in Texas was told that she had to drive fifteen hours to New Mexico to have her ectopic pregnancy—which is nonviable, by definition, and always dangerous to the mother—removed.” That is based on a story from 2021 before the Dobbs decision and an account from an abortion hotline of a doctor refusing to deal with an ectopic pregnancy. It is not explained how, even when Roe v. Wade was still good law, such a procedure could be denied under Texas law.
A woman reading such accounts might easily conclude that she could be charged with a crime or face other legal penalties if she sought treatment for an ectopic pregnancy in restrictive states. These politicians stress that time is of the essence and that such a loss of time in an ectopic pregnancy could prove lethal. Yet, their false claims could have precisely that effect.
That makes this not just disinformation but the most lethal form of disinformation. Indeed, it is precisely the type of disinformation that many of these same leaders have called to be censored. Indeed, this year, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez continued her call for corporate censorship on social media because “disinformation through U.S.-founded companies like Facebook … have absolutely slowed and frankly sabotaged” efforts in areas like Covid treatment. Many have rallied to this anti-free speech cause. Indeed, this week, another medical professor was suspended for simply calling for a discussion of concerns over the need for Covid vaccines of children.
I remain opposed to government and corporate censorship of disinformation, including the false statements made by Rep. Ocasio-Cortez. Like many of the false claims surrounding the Dobbs decision, these issues can be addressed without curtailing free speech, but that only increases the importance of countering these false narratives.
President Biden and other Democratic members have called for censorship because social media companies are “killing people” with disinformation. That is precisely what could occur if women believe the claims of politicians and pundits on these ectopic pregnancies.
The NeoSophists are rising once again…the neverending battle continues.
Jonathan: Once again, we are witnessing the law of unintended consequences as a result of the Dobbs decision. Ectopic pregnancies can be deadly without immediate medical treatment. Despite what you claim serious concerns are being raised about whether they are included in abortion bans in many states. Under Missouri’s “trigger’ law there is an exception for “medical emergencies” but doctors and hospitals are wrestling with whether they could be charged with a crime under the vague language of the law. One state representative has called on the governor to get the GOP controlled legislature to spell out clearly that ectopic pregnancies are excluded. This controversy is playing out in other states where GOP legislatures rushed to pass abortion bans without thinking about the consequences.
But you seem to think “even if the law were silent on ectopic pregnancies, it is doubtful that the courts would ignore the medical and factual classification to treat such emergency procedures as abortion or ignore that the mother’s life is in danger…”. But earlier in your column you say: “[t]reating such woman is not an abortion of a viable pregnancy”. Which is it? Oklahoma’s law says terminating an ectopic pregnancy is “not an abortion”. Tell that to doctors who perform abortions. They don’t treat ectopic pregnancies any differently then other types of pregnancies that are terminated through abortion. It’s a contradiction for you and Oklahoma to bizarrely argue that a procedure to terminate an ectopic pregnancy is somehow not an “abortion”. But that’s what Oklahoma had to do in its rush to pass its abortion ban. Then is the issue of what the courts will say on the issue of ectopic pregnancies. If we agree an ectopic pregnancy requires immediate intervention do you think a patient or a doctor can wait around for a court to make a ruling? That’s why women are flying to other states where abortion is legal to terminate an ectopic pregnancy as quickly as possible. But this can cause delays that, yes, can threaten the life a women. Waiting for a court to rule can have deadly consequences! Something you obviously have not thought through.
It is anti-abortion groups who are peddling disinformation. Some are bizarrely arguing that patients with ectopic pregnancies can simply be monitored until they miscarry–or even that such pregnancies can be carried to term. They can’t. In the Ohio abortion law there is a provision for surgical reimplantation of the ectopic pregnancy into the uterus. The medical community says that’s impossible. The Dobbs decision is producing chaos re women’s health decisions. And what is your response? Don’t listen to AOC, ladies, she is an alarmist. The courts will sort it out. Just be patient. This is how over the hill you have gone in trying to justify Dobbs!
As predicted there is a huge fight going on in states that have banned abortion–like in Texas. A pregnant woman was stopped by Texas police because she was driving alone in a car-pool lane. The woman said there were two people in the car. The police officer that pulled over the woman, searched the car and said something like “It’s just you…where’s the other person?” “It’s right here” the woman said pointing to her large stomach. The officer was not persuaded and issued the woman a $275 citation. The woman is going to court to fight the ticket. Under the Texas abortion ban an unborn child is considered a person “at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth”. What did I say about the law of unintended consequences?
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TYRANNOSAURUS REX
For Kathy, friend, mentor and wife. Stupor Mundi.
Copyright ©2022 A. J. Reffes. All rights reserved. Published by Progress Publishers, Berlin, Germany.
A monster is a fictional creature found in folklore, myth and religion, depicted as dangerous, aggressive and grotesque. It is an object of terror and fear and is morally and spiritually deformed. The fundamental symptom of a civilization in decline is the appearance of monsters. Emerging from the womb of antireason, monsters stalk the land and battle for control over people’s souls. Born from the rejection of reason which marks the frightful senescence of a culture, monsters fall into two fundamental categories: monsters of materialism and monsters of spiritualism. The progeny of mental instability, derangement and rank psychosis, these are monsters which worship at the altars of matter in the absence of mind, and mind in the absence of matter. Representing two sides of the same schizophrenic coin, marked the denial of ordinary experience and common sense, these are the monsters of reductionism and supernaturalism, and their denial, on the one hand, that man possesses an intellect, and on the other hand, that man possesses bodily senses, has spelled the death of every civilization which has let them through its gates and fallen under their control. During the dying days of Rome, they celebrated their final victory, the monsters of materialism appearing in the form of Germanic barbarians, and the monsters of spiritualism appearing in the form of Christians, their final victory over the Classical world of sound mental health. The world of the Greeks and Romans affirmed man as a rational animal possessed of both body and mind, matter and spirit, functioning together and in harmony to enable man to flourish in a human manner and to acquire true knowledge about the nature of reality. In the present day, these monsters have been unleashed anew and have devoured civilized institutions, and prevented people from thinking and behaving in a normal, sane, rational manner. Coming back to life from the graveyards of Classical civilization, these monsters are back in business, reinstalled into power by the wheel of history spun round by the masses driven by their inveterate and notorious rejection of reason, and have together lowered the curtain on the West. Their rampages comprise the story of the West in its final stage of development, and these creatures of an unbalanced mind, these voices of material existence uninformed by the intellect, and spiritual existence uninformed by empiricism, have pushed the West into the tarpits of total extinction. These monsters have reappeared in the present day in the form of Marxism and its derivatives, and the form of a resurgent Christian movement, plucked from the West’s Dark Ages and granted a new lease on life. Listen to their words and hear the voices of a deceased civilization echo across the abandoned streets of reason and sanity, as they resounded a thousand years before across the desolate ruins of ancient Rome. Listen to the words of today’s reductive materialists, today’s Germanic barbarians, and hear them proclaim that the state is a god on earth. Hear them proclaim that intellectual labor produces nothing, intellectual laborers are idlers, exploiters and parasites, and all wealth comes from the muscle labor of the proletariat. Hear them proclaim that there is no individual responsibility but only social responsibility. Hear them proclaim that there is no individual justice but only social justice. Hear them proclaim that there are no individual human beings but only members of genders, races and classes. Hear them the proclaim that people should be selected for jobs on the basis of their race or gender and not their talents or abilities. Hear them the proclaim that capitalism is synonymous with structural, systemic and institutionalized racism. Hear them the proclaim that capitalism is the relentless, merciless lash of the white man. Hear them the proclaim that social justice demands a system of positive, affirmative discrimination in favor of blacks. Hear them the proclaim that a progressive society is a tribal society which has abolished the liberal order of individual rights and equal protection of all before the law. Hear them the proclaim that a progressive society is a welfare state which confers the rights to health care, education and cradle to grave economic security upon all people. Hear them proclaim that freedom of speech is dangerous to a socialist society and must be abolished. Hear them proclaim that criticisms of radical feminism, black nationalism and the communist poor are forms of violence and aggression and must be prohibited. Hear them proclaim that a progressive society is a censorious society which enforces a code of political correctness against the voices of liberal dissent. Hear them the proclaim that criticism of gender, race and class politics is a form of hate speech and people who engage in it must be blocked from using the internet and be forced to reveal their passwords to the state’s internet thought police. Hear them proclaim that a progressive society has abolished the right to private property and forced the owners of private businesses to open their doors to anybody who walks through. Hear them proclaim that there is no such thing as a private business accommodation and all socalled private business accommodations are in fact public accommodations and must to do business with every member of the public. Hear them proclaim that there are no such things as sex genes, that X chromosomes and Y chromosomes are mere fabrications, and that sex is not fixed or immutable but can be changed by surgical and chemical means, and that males and females can transform themselves into members of the opposite sex. Look at today’s neoMarxist transgenderists and watch them silence those who affirm the genetic basis of sex. Watch them censor the opponents of gender ideology. Watch them suppress those who accept the facts of biological reality and reject the dogma that sex can be changed by means of sex hormones and surgery. Watch them chastise these dissidents, burn them at the stake, prevent them from pursuing a livelihood, and drum them out the human race: ”The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is threatening to revoke the teaching license of a school counselor who spoke out against the predations of gender ideology at a feminist rally. Marissa Darlingh, the Milwaukee Public Schools counselor, spoke out against the ideology at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, saying she ‘opposes gender ideology,’ telling the crowd that young children should not be ‘exposed to the harms of gender identity ideology’ or provided ‘unfettered access to hormones—wrong sex hormones—and surgery.’ The WDPI appears to be retaliating by opening an investigation into Darlingh’s ‘immoral conduct’ and threatening to revoke her teaching license.” (Wisconsin Threatens Livelihood Of Teacher Who Spoke Out Against Gender Ideology by Breccan Thies). Look at today’s resurgent Christian movement and see it achieve victory on the streets and in the law. The crown jewel of its victory was achieved on June 24, 2022, when the United States Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and held that the constitution does not confer a right to obtain an abortion. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the court authorized states to declare that abortion is murder and to outlaw abortion at any stage of a pregnancy. The court authorized states to declare that a fertilized ovum, at the moment of fertilization, is an actual human person with a right to life which states may protect. The court authorized states to declare that a human person mystically appears at the moment of conception, and to enforce religious dogma, and to establish religion, in violation of the constitution’s requirement, set forth in the First Amendment, of a wall of separation between church and state. Mental illness is an impairment in mental functioning which leads to a detachment from and rejection of reality. The culmination of mental illnesa is a state of schizophrenic breakdown marked by total mental withdrawal and collapse. It is marked by a rejection of pictures of the external world and a denial of the doctrine of empiricism. Sane people affirm that the greatest argument for the existence of something is a picture of it. A picture of a fertilized ovum at the moment of fertilization is a picture of a prehuman entity. It is the picture of a potential human being. It is not the picture of an actual human person. In the Dobbs decision, the court authorized states to declare that this picture of potentiality represents a lower reality and is transcended by a higher supernatural reality in which an actual human person appears. This higher reality cannot be seen and the court authorized states to declare that its lack of visibility is irrelevant because man is blind because he sees. The court authorized states to sanction and institutionalize mental illness and schizophrenic breakdown. Listen to the court’s decision and hear it authorize states to declare that a potential human life is equal in value to an actual human life, that rights pertain to potential human beings and not just to actual human beings, and that a fertilized egg, at the moment of fertilization, is an actual yet unborn human being: “What sharply distinguishes the abortion right from the rights recognized in the cases on which Roe and Casey rely is something that both those decisions acknowledged: Abortion destroys what those decisions call ‘potential life’ and what the law at issue in this case regards as the life of an ‘unborn human being’.” (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, opinion of the court delivered by Associate Justice Samuel Alito). Listen to the court’s decision and hear it declare that the right to obtain an abortion is not protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of liberty because the right was not recognized at the time of the adoption of the amendment. Supporters of logic, language and the constitution reply that words mean what they mean, that A means A, that liberty means liberty, regardless of traditions, practices, history or intentons: ”Abortion couldn’t be constitutionally protected. Until the latter part of the twentieth century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law. Indeed, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the States made abortion a crime at all stages of pregnancy.” (Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, opinion of the court delivered by Associate Justice Samuel Alito). From the far horizons of the distant past have stampeded the purveyors of antireason. Under the guise of materialists and spiritualists, cavemen and shamans, Marxists and Christians, they have advanced upon the West and assumed control over its final hours.
This response is perfect. I love it
Except that we have seen women with real and life threatening medical conditions having abortions delayed. Many hospitals, especially Catholic ones require doctors to get prior approval from non-doctor “Ethics Boards” before performing medically necessary abortions. We even have hospitals having pickles that say that the women must be in acute distress and on the verge of dying before an abortion can be performed.
“…we have seen…” “Many hospitals…” “…hospitals having pickles (sic)” Vague generalities/hearsay/opinions presented as facts carry no weight. Please detail any of these situations with reference from source then make your point.
He talks using the wrong orifice and is a sock puppet for another creature, so don’t expect him to respond to fact.
I seriously doubt that life is a concern to any of these monsters who have pushed a tainted syringe juice on MILLIONS, culminating in death and harm of unprecedented numbers.
2021 had an unexpected 40% increase in “all cause deaths”
Is it possible for normal circumstances to show this type of increase in all cause mortality? Of course not. And normally (before covid) such information would be freaking the medical establishment out. Funny how most cannot seem to connect the dots.
And why can’t they connect the dots? Because most people in the medical/government/media would immediately lose their jobs and be socially ostracized (cancel culture) were they to actually start talking about what they see in hospitals (as an example).
But the truth is starting to bleed through because the numbers are so huge. 40%?!?
https://youtu.be/-GXvV6Pybns
I’m telling you that someday this entire thing will be seen as the orchestrated, intentional scam that it has been, but they are murdering people and causing horrible harm to so many that heads will roll. Used to destroy the dollar and gain even more control of the population.
Anyone who thinks the rise in deaths is from the vaccines and not from Covid — especially among the unvaccinated — is in deep denial.
Every metric shows that hospitalizations and death are highest among the vaccinated. I trust you got yours, so time will tell.
And at this point, people stupid enough to get them deserve what they get.