Have you ever been so angry you couldn't speak? I have been meaning to write about a talk I attended, given by Dr. Rebecca Kukla on ultrasound viewing before abortion. Dr. Kukla argued that ultrasound screening has become a ritual in our society to establish parenthood and add (prematurely and irrationally) a new member to the family. Performing an ultrasound and explaining the findings to a woman desiring to end her pregnancy would thus cause unnecessary and severe psychological trauma. She also argued that this imposed moral harm on physicians as it required them to violate their fundamental duties to patients.
I have been meaning to write this post since January. I have kept the folded-up flier from the talk in my desk since then. There it sat, outlasting the semester, my STEP studying, and my move to a different city. Usually, when I keep a piece of paper as a reminder to complete a task (e.g. a blog post, or mailing something, or running an errand), the having of the paper bothers me just enough to make me want to complete the task. But this time, I preferred to keep the paper rather than write the post. I just couldn't do it.
Every time I sat down to do it I would formulate the ghost of an argument, take out the paper, unfold it, look at it, and recall the tone and content of the argument. The first few wisps of a post that I had would evaporate as I would become angry. Not desiring to be angry, I would just put the paper and the idea away.
Today I realized the pattern. And now the flier is in the trash, but I have a decision to make (I am literally making this decision as I type). I can either write the rebuttal now, or I can just forget about it.
I am still too angry for a level-headed, reasoned argument, so if you read this, Dr. Kukla, please excuse me as still young and full of idealism. I will strive to be professional, though.
Before most minor surgical procedures that require general anesthesia (e.g. cholecystectomy or gall bladder removal), an ultrasound or other imaging is done. Vaginal ultrasound is quite common in gynecology. It also doesn't stand out as uniquely invasive. (Ultrasound for cholecystectomy gets to the bile duct via the mouth, and I'm sure you can imagine how they stage colon cancer). Abortions actually become more like the minor surgical procedures they're touted to be when an ultrasound is performed. I would hope they're done anyway.
Adequate bedside manner during any exam or procedure in which a person is awake but unable to interpret the findings includes explaining the findings. "Mrs. Anderson, your lungs sound normal." "Ms. Patel, the skin biopsy is almost over and your back looks good." "Mr. Deere, this darkish color on the ultrasound means you have a lot of fat in your liver." Let's encourage abortionists to have good beside manner by requiring them to describe the findings. I would hope most of them do anyway.
Dr. Kukla's concludes that ultrasounds like this impinge on the physician's duty to do no harm, but she happily supports the procedure that follows, which will leave 14% of the women who undergo it with full PTSD (slide 42). (For reference, 15.2% of Vietnam vets have full PTSD.) Abortion increases the risk of suicide to 650% (slide 74), substance abuse (61 and following), and depression (9 and following) is considered desirable, so desirable that even medically legitimate restrictions are deemed morally intolerable.
I think that's all I have to say. Dr. Kukla and I agree that vaginal ultrasound cannot be considered a kind of "rape," and we also agree that it's not ideal that these regulations come through a governing body (we'd both prefer they come through professional organizations). But I find her basic attitude (defending abortion while objecting to an ultrasound) to be inconsistent.
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