Do you want right wing politicians in your doctor’s office?
by digby
I didn’t think so. I wrote a piece for Salon today about a number of different ways they’re trying to do that:
Almost exactly 10 years ago today, Terry Schiavo became a household name when the entire right wing of the Republican Party decided to virtually elbow their way into her hospital room and demand that her advance directive, as relayed by her husband, to not use extraordinary measures to keep her alive was inoperative and irrelevant. God might perform a miracle, after all, so it’s nobody’s place to interfere, not even the individual herself. Ultimately, Schiavo’s rights were upheld but the nation got a good hard look at the right wing stepping into the personal relationship between doctor, patient and family when the entire congress was called back to Washington to vote on this one issue and the president, on one of his lengthy Crawford vacations, made the unprecedented decision to fly back to the capitol in the middle of the night to sign it. The sight of these powerful people dictating the details of the doctor-patient relationship from a distance was off-putting to many Americans. These were, after all, the very politicians who made a fetish out of “keeping the government out of our lives.”
This was no revelation to people who work in the area of reproductive rights, of course. The whole issue of abortion is about the state interfering in the most personal, intimate interaction between doctor and patient and family. But, there was no sex involved in the Schiavo incident, no “irresponsibility”, no smiling babies or patriarchal assumptions to distract from the reality of this ugly scene as there always in when it comes to abortion rights. Both men and women could put themselves into this situation equally, they could see themselves having to deal with aging parents and their own kids having to deal with them. It hit home.
But it quickly retreated from sight and the right continued on with its crusade to micro-manage the relationship between doctor and patient in keeping with their particular religious values. All over the country, Republican legislatures are putting laws into place to force doctors to read a set script to patients seeking abortions and require them to perform unnecessary ultrasound tests to try and make women feel guilty for their decision.
Just this week, the state of Arizona passed a new law requiring doctor’s to not only lie to their patients but potentially put them in medical danger: read on