Close of the Race: Healthcare for Women
Tragedy of Dobbs Decision
As the Presidential race closes, in the final stretch, with only four days till the 5th of November, two central issues are:
The Fascist race-baiting of Yale educated JD Vance and Wharton-School educated Trump, the Ivy League Neo-Nazis converting the pre-Holocaust blood libel (Jews steal kids and eat them in rituals) and transferring the blood libel against highly cultured, legal immigrants from Haiti (they steal pets and eat the kitties and puppies in Voodoo rituals), which resulted in violence in Springfield, Ohio, and Republican officials, Governor and Mayor, begging Vance/Trump to stop inflaming violence with the blood-libel; and, central to today’s thoughts,
Access to national-class healthcare for women and girls in the sacred space of the medical practitioner’s office and lab, with traditional rights to privacy, freedom of choice, the opportunity to weigh and decide healthcare issues on the merits of the medical evidence, without fear of the imperial spear of the State, the Patriarchal Government.
My ethic is secular, though, for full disclosure, I am a lifelong practicing Catholic (with my parents providing me a comical interlude of teenage years wasted in Fundamentalist cults).
My ethic is more informed by Epictetus or Plotinus than by the Magisterium of the Church.
Accordingly, I am outraged at the Catholic teaching on so-called right-to-life.
I do not believe in the death penalty.
But the Bishops are rigid in canonical law, contrary to the teachings of the Forefathers, the Rabbis, the teachings of the Talmud. Under the teachings of the rabbis, the Mother’s life is primary.
Not so with the Bishops.
In an infamous case, where a little girl, some nine-years old, was carrying the fruit of forced incest, responsible guardians got the girl to sound medical authority, who saved the young girl’s life.
The matter resulted in an outburst among the local bishops, excommunicating all who were trying to help the girl, because, you see, the Magisterium owns no exceptions — as in none — in the proscription against abortion.
Absolutely closed to reason.
The matter finally got appealed to the Vatican, the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith” — a nice title, but this “Congregation” is “The Holy Office,” or, informally, are you ready: The I-n-q-u-i-s-i-t-i-o-n .
And here is the report:
VATICAN CITY
Commenting on the controversial case of a 9-year-old Brazilian rape victim who underwent an abortion, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the concern the church needs to show the girl does not change the fact that that abortion is wrong.
In declaring that the doctors and others who were involved in helping the girl procure an abortion automatically incurred excommunication, the church does not intend to deny the girl mercy and understanding, said the statement published in the July 11 edition of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.
The penalty of excommunication "places in evidence the gravity of the crime committed (and) the irreparable damage caused to the innocent who was killed, to the parents and to all of society," the statement said
Source:
https://www.ncronline.org/news/doctrinal-congregation-9-year-olds-abortion
Neat, eh?!
Well, Armando, a lifelong, practicing Catholic dissents. I feel quite good about the tradition of the Talmud and the Rabbis that nurtured the life of the mother, the woman. The Rabbis did not tolerate this kind of cruelty that the Magisterium in such sanctimonious rhetoric induces.
Even as the great John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, points out, a boy learns young about the love of a woman, because a son loves his mom forever.
The key teaching to safeguard women and girls, their health, their privacy, their privileges, their Agency, their decisions, their choices is love and respect and the full embrace of womanly values.
But I was introduced to a love for Woman through my lifelong love of my Mom, from our Mother Country, Belgium, near Charleroi, who had suffered through the occupation of the Third Reich, who was spared being sent to labor camps because she had a critical skill needed where there were high casualties — she was already, in her early twenties, a registered nurse.
From her I learned everything that is valuable and of love in life.
My Mom gave me an old world heritage of ancestors who were autodidactic and advanced to high office through dint of study.
One of these was a second or third cousin (older) who worked the railroads and through self-teaching passed exams until he reached the top of his field. During WWII, he headed the depot at Antwerp, which was the leading pathway to shipments from the coast to Middle Europe. This heroic relative managed to unload massive church bells, that the Third Reich wanted to melt to weapons, hiding them in massive tunnels with railways, and out of view of the Gestapo. He also sabotaged military vehicles headed into the Ruhrgebiet. He was captured, tortured by the Gestapo, but remarkably lived to see his name celebrated as a hero in the local papers.
These stories gave me core values of a love of freedom, a desire for each person to live in safety and freedom, to be able to plan in the future with reason and deliberation, to accord human dignity to persons of each so-called race.
Of course, the Third Reich, kind of like the GOP anti-Latino rhetoric, is all about race — the Third Reich was obsessed with the Aryans — which simply means, think of it, persons with ancestry from Iran.
I mean that is good and OK, but is having common ancestry from Iran really an issue to divide over? I mean, really!
Franz Boas (8 July 1858 - 21 December 1942) lived in a day when eugenics was a popular contention, but this anthropologist blew racial theories — like the Aryan craze — totally out of the water.
This will be worth a full issue.
But the point hitherto is that in a boy’s life, acknowledged as early as the great philosopher John Locke, WOMAN is everything. My Mom was EVERYTHING in my youth; my leading light; my model for my love in my whole adult life of Nancy — the Light-and-Love-of-My-Life, with whom I have lived 53-years (51 as an honest man).
The politics of patriarchy are totally incomprehensible; unintelligible.
My wonderful wife, my daughters, my granddaughter, my woman friends, my sister, my woman colleagues, the woman lawyers I have worked with or opposed, and, first, my Mom — Women are EVERYTHING in my life, and that gives me tremendous happiness and joy.
So, the misogyny of the neo-Fascists is incomprehensible, unintelligible to me.
A major post-war writer in Germany was Johanna Moosdorf of Leipzig, who heroically tried to save her husband, Paul Bernstein, during the Third Reich; postponing his deportation to a death camp in 1942; only to lose Paul Bernstein to Auschwitz in September, 1943.
This major tragedy in her life was such that Johanna Moosdorf never, ever overcame the pain.
Johanna Moosdorf, who lived from 1911 to 2000, wrote a series of novels, chief of which were Freundinnen (Girlfriends) and Jahrhundertsträume (Dreams of a Century), in each of which Johanna Moosdorf confronted the Third Reich head on.
Johanna Moosdorf reached deep into history, looking at the witch trials of the 16th century, and transforming Nazi figures into 16th Century Inquisition judges who would capture, imprison, interrogate, torture, interrogate again, step up the torture, and not end until either the victim confessed, in which case she was executed — she was a self-confessed “witch” — or, if she did not confess, she was executed — surely someone who stubbornly resisted to the end was demon possessed, and, thus, a witch, and must be executed.
Johanna Moosdorf pictures — transforming the Third Reich into the Inquisition and Witch Hunts — created at the same time figures, women, who heroically loved each other and would attempt to intervene to sacrifice herself on the pyre for her loved girlfriend or even sister.
In Johanna Moosdorf’s narrative, the Inquisition did not hesitate to wipe out three generations of women.
Having read many post-war German works, Johanna Moosdorf, who bitterly sorrowed over the loss of both her husband, Paul Moosdorf, to Auschwitz, and her husband’s whole family, spent the postwar years to the end of her life ensuring the memories remained alive.
So, is it a coincidence that we have Nazi rhetoric from misogynists?
Having read most of her work, I can assure you that Johanna Moosdorf — with bitter personal history — would concur that misogyny, Patriarchal male structures — coupled with bitter, hateful race-baiting — are at the center of any tradition that could be allied with the Nazis.
And when one talks of deporting ten millions; when one paints a large minority — or any minority — with hatred; when one transfers the blood libel to a vulnerable minority (as Yale-educated (!!) JD Vance does with Haitians — they steal pets and eat kitties/puppies at Voodoo); when JD Vance incites violence against Haitians, overriding the dire petitions of the Republican Governor and the Republican Mayor to stop — well, what direction does that look to devolve into? Jim Crow. Fascism . . .
The brutality of the hatred and race-baiting would be quite familiar to Johanna Moosdorf.
And it goes hand-in-hand with misogyny.
Who cannot be familiar with the case of the 10-year-old girl, abused by an adult male in the family, who had to leave Ohio, who went to the Medical School, Indiana University, the campus located in Indianapolis, to services rendered under supervision of Professor Caitlin Bernard.
See here:
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/13/1111285143/abortion-10-year-old-raped-ohio
Dr. Caitlin Bernard is a very distinguished physician at a teaching hospital of the Medical School, Indiana University, of whom the American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) said,
On June 30, 2022, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, Indiana OB-GYN Caitlin Bernard, MD, performed an abortion on a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been raped. A reporter who overheard Bernard share this experience with a colleague asked if the incident could be included in a news article, and Bernard agreed.
The fallout was swift. Bernard, 38, was accused of fabricating the rape story. The state’s attorney general launched an investigation against Bernard and accused her of failing to stay current on “professional theory or practice.” She was reprimanded and fined by her state’s medical licensing board for breaching the patient’s privacy, an allegation she and her employer, Indiana University Health, rejected. She was targeted by politicians and pundits and received threats to her personal safety.
The Honorable Jim Jordan (R-OH), who turned a blind eye to sexual abuse of young men by a wrestling coach at his university, called the medical professional’s narrative about the violated 10-year-old girl “Another lie . . . Anyone surprised?”
I leave the reader to draw her own conclusions about the Honorable Congressman’s attention to victims of sexual abuse.
How about Republican Indiana. How do they weigh in about protecting a ten-year-old from brutal sexual abuse?
The Republican attorney general of Indiana, Todd Rokita, appeared with Fox's Jesse Watters tonight, tweeting that Watters was fighting "fake news." He announced to Watters' viewers he would be scrutinizing Bernard's record to see if he could challenge her medical license.
Source:
https://www.npr.org/2022/07/13/1111285143/abortion-10-year-old-raped-ohio
Dr. Caitlin Bernard is a leading authority in her field, as one can see by her professional webpage with her cited peer-reviewed scientific literature here:
https://medicine.iu.edu/faculty/23008/bernard-caitlin
The issue of free choices for girls under proper adult care and women to be able to weigh decisions for their own healthcare and safety is critical to a Democracy of law and ordered liberty.
The American Society of Nephrology has weighed in on this issue:
Casting aside 49 years of precedent and eliminating the constitutional right of millions of Americans to make decisions about their health care, the US Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has inserted the government between patients and their physicians. The American Society of Nephrology (ASN) strongly denounces this—or any—interference into the practice of medicine that undermines the integrity of the patient-physician relationship.
* * *
Deaths during childbirth have been increasing in the United States since 2000. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the maternal mortality rate is now nearly three times as high for Black women than the rate for White women. Nearly two-thirds of the 861 pregnancy-related deaths that occurred in the United States in 2020 were considered preventable. The US “maternal mortality rate for 2020 was 23.8 deaths per 100,000 live births,” according to CDC. Among industrialized nations, the next highest mortality rate is 8.7 deaths per 100,000 live births in France.
Infants born to people with kidney diseases are 70% more likely to be admitted to a neonatal care unit or die, and pregnant people with kidney diseases are more likely to experience severe health complications, such as preeclampsia and pre-term delivery. Pregnant people with kidney diseases often adapt poorly to the physiologic changes associated with pregnancy, and many experience an irreversible deterioration in their kidney function. Given the high rate of preventable pregnancy-related deaths for people with underlying medical conditions, pregnancy-related decisions must be made between patients and their physicians.
As many as 26 states are now expected to ban all or nearly all abortions—including for pregnancies caused by rape and incest—endangering millions of people. This decision immediately threatens access to some forms of contraception and potentially to fertility treatments in some states. Some states will also allow private citizens to take legal action against physicians, other health professionals, and their fellow neighbors who help people obtain reproductive health care and information.
Source:
https://www.asn-online.org/news/2022/0625-ASN_Statement_on_Do.pdf
The American Medical Association has spoken out against Dobbs:
The American Medical Association is deeply disturbed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn nearly a half century of precedent protecting patients’ right to critical reproductive health care. This is an egregious allowance of government intrusion into the medical examination room, a direct attack on the practice of medicine and the patient-physician relationship, and a brazen violation of patients’ rights to evidence-based reproductive health services.
States that end legal abortion will not end abortion—they will end safe abortion, risking devastating consequences, including patients’ lives.
* * *
Access to legal reproductive care will be limited to those with the sufficient resources, circumstances, and financial means to do so—exacerbating health inequities by placing the heaviest burden on patients from Black, Latinx, Indigenous, low-income, rural and other historically disadvantaged communities that already face numerous structural and systemic barriers to accessing health care.
In alignment with our long-held position that the early termination of a pregnancy is a medical matter between the patient and physician, subject only to the physician’s clinical judgment and the patient’s informed consent, the AMA condemns the high court’s interpretation in this case.
Source:
My author, Johanna Moosdorf, who lived through the Third Reich, who lost her well-loved husband, Paul Bernstein, to Auschwitz, whose children were branded racially by the Third Reich as “Mischlingen” (Mixed-Blood — i.e., half Jewish); who lost her husband’s well-loved family to the death camps, she linked the Alpha-Male, militaristic, lock-step cult of “The Leader” (der Führer) to the genocide, and connected the Third Reich to the murderous witch-hunts, massacring women — wiping out three generations of women in certain families.
The race-baiting of JD Vance with his obscene Blood-Libel, practiced on Jews, now targeting for violence Haitian immigrants, who are peaceful and hardworking, this is linked to the dogmatic philosophy that has the Grand State violate, yes, violate the safety, the healthcare, the security, the very life of women and girls we love.
As a Man, my whole life is enriched by the women and the girls in my family and in my whole life, and my instinct is to intervene to prevent harm, be it of a misguided Republican state.
My instinct is that of the Indiana University Medical School, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, who stands as a professional of high integrity and honor willing to sacrifice herself, as the heroes in the postwar novels of Johanna Moosdorf, for her patients, the women and girls.
The right of a patient, a woman, a girl under proper, loving adult guidance, to her medical choices is sacred and the law should recognize the patient rights as inviolate.
Given the choice between politicians and the American Medical Association, the American Nephrology Association, and the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists . . .
Well, is there anyone here that wants Congressman Jim Jordan to make medical choices for a woman you love in your life?
Meanwhile, here is a picture of what it will look like for Armando on Tuesday and Wednesday nights next week:
Remember, after the Joyful Warrior, Kamala Harris, is elected President of the United States, our work has but begun.
We have to work until we free each state of Jim Crow and Jane Crow (thanks for this, Ms. CellyBlue): Florida, Alabama, Texas: acronym — FLAT.
Great post, Armand!
Thanks for being an advocate for women! It's so rare.