there's one thing i have to say, so i'll be brave [entries|friends|calendar] fatty mcbuttered fats memory will rust and erode into lists of all that you gave me: a blanket, some matches, this pain in my chest. the best parts of lonely: duct-tape&soldered wires, new words for old desires, &every birthday card i threw away. [ userinfo | livejournal userinfo ] [ calendar | livejournal calendar ]

[26 Jun 2007|08:25pm] Read this. Long story short (excerpts): "Catholic and conservative Christian health care providers are denying women a range of standard, legal medical care. Planned Parenthood M.D.s report patients coming to them because other gynecologists would not dole out birth control prescriptions or abortion referrals. Infertility clinics have turned away lesbians and unmarried women; anesthesiologists and obstetricians are refusing to do sterilizations; Catholic hospitals have delayed ending doomed pregnancies because abortions are only allowed to save the life of the mother. In a survey published this year in The New England Journal of Medicine, 63 percent of doctors said it is acceptable to tell patients they have moral objections to treatments, and 18 percent felt no obligation to refer patients elsewhere. And in a recent SELF.com poll, nearly 1 in 20 respondents said their doctors had refused to treat them for moral, ethical or religious reasons. "It's obscene," says Jamie D. Brooks, a former staff attorney for the National Health Law Program who continues to work on projects with the Los Angeles advocacy group. "Doctors swear an oath to serve their patients. But instead, they are allowing their religious beliefs to compromise patient care. And too often, the victims of this practice are women."" "In many cases, women don't even know a doctor is withholding treatment. Boyer and Harnish, for example, wouldn't have realized they'd been denied care if they'd been among the estimated one in three women who don't know about EC. In the New England Journal of Medicine survey, 8 percent of physicians said they felt no obligation to present all options to their patients. "When you see a doctor, you presume you're getting all the information you need to make a decision," notes Jill Morrison, senior counsel for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C. "Especially in a crisis situation, like a rape, you often don't think to question your care. But unfortunately, now we can't even trust doctors to tell us what we need to know."" "When Elizabeth Dotts walked into her new doctor's office for a gynecologic exam and checkup, she didn't realize she was treading into the front lines of a culture war. "I was just going for my annual visit, nothing out of the ordinary," says the 26-year-old YWCA grant coordinator. Dotts, who was single, had recently moved to Birmingham, Alabama, and was seeing an M.D. recommended by a coworker. The visit was unremarkable until she asked for a refill of her birth control prescription. That's when the doctor informed her that he was Catholic and the pills were against his religion. Story continues below ↓advertisement "The look he gave me actually made me feel ashamed," Dotts says. "Like I had this wild and crazy sex life. Like he was trying to protect me from myself." Her bewilderment quickly turned to anger — "I thought, 'Wait, what in the world? Where am I?' " — especially when she remembered that her insurance covered only one annual gynecology checkup. Dotts, who'd majored in religion in college, got tough with the doctor. "I'm glad for you that you're faithful," she told him. "But don't push it on me. I'm here for my treatment, and I expect you to give it to me." Five minutes of verbal sparring later, the doctor relented with a six-month prescription — but only after Dotts told him she had been put on the Pill to relieve menstrual cramping, not to prevent pregnancy. Dotts grabbed the prescription and left, resolving to find herself a new gynecologist. "Before, walking into a doctor's office, I assumed we were on the same side," she says. "I don't make that assumption now. I ask a million questions and advocate for myself." " "In theory, the laws aren't aimed solely at women's health — a bill in New Jersey lists eye doctors and prosthetics technicians as examples of providers who'd be allowed to refuse care based on their beliefs. But Morrison warns women not to be fooled. "I ask you, what belief would keep someone from fitting a patient with a prosthetic limb?" she asks. "What they're really after is limiting access to women's health care. Reproductive health is seen as something other than regular health care" — not a straightforward matter of treating and healing, but something laden with morality — "and if you treat it that way, it becomes something providers can say yes or no to." Men, for the most part, escape such scrutiny: It's pretty hard to imagine someone being made to feel he's going straight to hell for choosing to take Viagra or get a vasectomy. And if women come to fear their doctors' judgments, a new set of problems can develop. "Then you have women who don't communicate with their doctors or avoid getting care," Morrison warns. "Any way you look at it, it's dangerous for women."" "The stakes were high for Realtor Cheryl Bray when she visited a physician in Encinitas, California, two and a half years ago. Though she was there for a routine physical, the reason for the exam was anything but routine: Then a single 41-year-old, Bray had decided to adopt a baby in Mexico and needed to prove to authorities there that she was healthy. "I was under a tight deadline," Bray remembers; she had been matched with a birth mother who was less than two months from delivering. Bray had already passed a daunting number of tests — having her taxes certified, multiple background checks, home inspections by a social worker, psychological evaluations. When she showed up at the office of Fred Salley, M.D., a new doctor a friend had recommended, she was looking forward to crossing another task off her list. Instead, 10 minutes into the appointment, Dr. Salley asked, "So, your husband is in agreement with your decision to adopt?" "I'm not married," Bray told him. "You're not?" He calmly put down his pen. "Then I'm not comfortable continuing this exam." Bray managed to get an appointment with another physician about a month later and was approved for the adoption two weeks before her daughter, Paolina, was born. But she remained furious enough that she filed a complaint against Dr. Salley with the Medical Board of California — and then was shocked when, in April 2006, the board closed the case without taking any action. When she complained to Dr. Salley's employer, a clinic official wrote back that "based on personally held conscience and moral principles" her doctor had been within his rights to refuse her as a patient. "Apparently," she says, "it's OK to discriminate against somebody, as long as it's for religious reasons."" "Ob/gyn Wayne Goldner, M.D., learned this lesson a few years back when a patient named Kathleen Hutchins came to his office in Manchester, New Hampshire. She was only 14 weeks pregnant, but her water had broken. Dr. Goldner delivered the bad news: Because there wasn't enough amniotic fluid left and it was too early for the fetus to survive on its own, the pregnancy was hopeless. Hutchins would likely miscarry in a matter of weeks. But in the meanwhile, she stood at risk for serious infection, which could lead to infertility or death. Dr. Goldner says his devastated patient chose to get an abortion at local Elliot Hospital. But there was a problem. Elliot had recently merged with nearby Catholic Medical Center — and as a result, the hospital forbade abortions. "I was told I could not admit her unless there was a risk to her life," Dr. Goldner remembers. "They said, 'Why don't you wait until she has an infection or she gets a fever?' They were asking me to do something other than the standard of care. They wanted me to put her health in jeopardy." He tried admitting Hutchins elsewhere, only to discover that the nearest abortion provider was nearly 80 miles away in Lebanon, New Hampshire — and that she had no car. Ultimately, Dr. Goldner paid a taxi to drive her the hour and a half to the procedure. (The hospital merger has since dissolved, and Elliot is secular once again.)" "Every Catholic hospital is bound by the ethical directives of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which forbid abortion and sterilization (unless they are lifesaving), in vitro fertilization, surrogate motherhood, some prenatal genetic testing, all artificial forms of birth control and the use of condoms for HIV prevention. Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist hospitals may also restrict abortions. Which means that if your local hospital has been taken over — or if you're ever rushed to the nearest hospital in an emergency — you could be in for a surprise at the services you can't get. "Family physician Debra Stulberg, M.D., was completing her residency in 2004 when West Suburban Medical Center in Oak Park, Illinois, was acquired by the large Catholic system Resurrection Health Care. "They assured us that patient care would be unaffected," Dr. Stulberg says. "But then I got to see the reality." The doctor was struck by the hoops women had to jump through to get basic care. "One of my patients was a mother of four who had wanted a tubal ligation at delivery but was turned down," she says. "When I saw her not long afterward, she was pregnant with unwanted twins." And in emergency scenarios, Dr. Stulberg says, the newly merged hospital did not offer standard-of-care treatments. In one case that made the local paper, a patient came in with an ectopic pregnancy: an embryo had implanted in her fallopian tube. Such an embryo has zero chance of survival and is a serious threat to the mother, as its growth can rupture the tube. The more invasive way to treat an ectopic is to surgically remove the tube. An alternative, generally less risky way is to administer methotrexate, a drug also used for cancer. It dissolves the pregnancy but spares the tube, preserving the women's fertility. "The doctor thought the noninvasive treatment was best," Dr. Stulberg recounts. But Catholic directives specify that even in an ectopic pregnancy, doctors cannot perform "a direct abortion" — which, the on-call ob/gyn reasoned, would nix the drug option. (Surgery, on the other hand, could be considered a lifesaving measure that indirectly kills the embryo, and may be permitted.) The doctor didn't wait to take it up with the hospital's ethical committee; she told the patient to check out and head to another ER. (Citing patient confidentiality, West Suburban declined to comment, confirming only that as a Catholic hospital, it adheres to religious directives "in every instance.")" Read this as well. Keep reading. And one more. (There are links to the rest of the pages at the bottom of those last few.)

[08 Jul 2006|02:55pm] [ mood | internets are stupid ] This is grating on my last nerve so I'm making it public. LJ loser omfg_no_die (and any of her other alter egos) has been copping shit from my journal for the past, oh, two years now. It started with icons of myself and my e-friends, then interests and bios, pictures (not only of me but my photography, in general) and full-on entries. I've had her suspended before but she finally got those two brain cells working and made her shit friends-only, so now for all I know she's ganking my shit and passing it off as her own every day. Anyway, I just want to warn anybody who encounters this lurk's journal/MySpace/etc. that the pictures she posts are most likely not of her, the entries she posts are most likely not about her life, and the [anything] she does is most likely not her own. It's so fucking pathetic that some people use the internet as a way to cop identities. What do you get out of flaunting pictures of me as yourself on the internet? How dull must your life be to take to stealing other people's lives on the internet? And frankly, how busted must your face be if you're going to take my pictures? And how talentless must you be if you're going to steal my "art?" The cute thing is, she couldn't straight-up rip my layout this time because she knew I'd notice (catching on, eh?), so she picked off the title bar quote - didn't even bother to change the format. And the only reason this is so entertaining to me is because she probably has no idea where it's from and just thinks it's "like, soooo deep." So unoriginal. 19,000|sharpened elbows in the underground.

[02 Mar 2006|03:40pm] [ mood | dancey ] [ music | "Knock That Door" Enon ] jazz d to BTtoonz More options Feb 28 (2 days ago) While I appreciate the effort shown in your 2-27-06 cartoon, I must clarify that Al Qaida does not have an Olympic team because they are not, in fact, a country. (Waiting for a response.) Hi, Internet! 19,000|sharpened elbows in the underground.

[30 Oct 2005|10:40pm] [ music | "Succexy" Metric ] "The West has the answer to successful human life. Since it does, and because certain elements in the rest of the world have now chosen to attack us on our own ground (and never mind that we have invaded and ruled over vast portions of the rest of the world since time immemorial), we must enlighten those benighted portions of the globe in our defense. Our chosen method of enlightenment is brute military force, to be deployed even against countries that did not threaten us. The lack of a genuine threat is no argument against spreading our version of "civilization," for our mission is grounded not only in self-defense: it is also a moral mission. Our success and our "peace" directly correlates to our virtue. Those countries and those civilizations that do not enjoy the same success and peace are without virtue. In the most extreme (and, one could argue, most consistent) version of this tale, non-Western parts of the world are less than human -- and they are subhuman by choice. They are immoral, and sometimes even evil. Since we represent the good and they represent the evil, we are surely entitled to improve them, by invasion and bombing if necessary. If they do not threaten us today, they might at some indeterminate time in the future. And while we might kill many innocent civilians in our campaign of civilization, those who survive will be infinitely better off than they would have been otherwise. Besides, how "innocent" can any of them be -- since they are members of inferior, less than fully human civilizations, and since they are so by choice?" And the rest. It's a good read.

[13 Sep 2005|10:06pm] [ music | "Boeing" Majority Rule ] DEAR DRIVER OF THE BLACK AUDI TODAY ON ROUTES 46 AND 3 EAST, TURN SIGNALS ARE NOT OPTIONAL. ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE GOING TO CUT PEOPLE OFF EVERY FIVE FUCKING SECONDS IN GRIDLOCK TRAFFIC. SINCERELY, A CONSIDERATE FUCKING DRIVER P.S. NEXT TIME YOU SEE YOUR CAR, EXPECT YOUR FUCKING WINDSHIELD BASHED IN.

[16 Feb 2004|05:17pm]             Marriage is love.

[20 Oct 2003|12:02pm] [ music | "Pretty Picture Of A Broken Face" Hot Cross ] I stole this off somebody. I don't normally do survey-type things, but I like this. Post anything you want in a comment. What you think of me, or a secret, a confession, a fear, a crush, an idea - anything, regardless of who or what it is about or directed to. Post anonymously. 62,000|sharpened elbows in the underground.

[13 May 2003|04:35pm] [ mood | "better than you" or something equally pretentious ] [ music | some ostentatious, elitist, and/or "indie" bullshit ] Comment. Keep in mind I don't add a lot of people; the whole purpose of a private journal is privacy, so if I don't know you personally or have never carried a conversation with you, it's unlikely that I'll be inclined to add you. 172,000|sharpened elbows in the underground.

navigation [ viewing | most recent entries ]