Don't Make Decisions By the "Ick Factor"

In response to this Slate article.

Now that the Supreme Court is talking a great deal about topics it knows very little about again, all the yahoos are coming back out to play. I know they have a degree that says "doctor" in it, but that's not for being a medical doctor. I'm not for late-term abortions outside of medical necessity. On the other hand, I have some grave concerns for a law that doesn't take medical necessity into account, and requires deciding input from someone who isn't a doctor. But I'm not talking about this law.

I'm talking about an argument tactic that some people use. I see it time and time again - the squicked out reader hits that paragraph that describes the process of a late-term abortion and just freaks out. They start calling anyone who could do this a monster, etc.

Banning this because you think the procedure is gross is NOT acceptable. Laws are made with the head.

I hate to break it to you squeamish types, but being a doctor is full of things like that. People require some amazing ends to keep them alive. Medicine is full of things I wish to God never had to happen to even my worst enemy.

I remember talking to an acquaintance of mine who is an opthamologist about a particularly intense scleral buckle she had installed. Or how about debriding a major burn?

Note the tone of the instructions. They're the same. I could have come up with some really cool ones, like mitigating obstetrical fistulas or a cauterizing vasectomy, but I didn't want to have the entire audience under the table.

I'm not unsympathetic to those feelings. I found a release form for doing that debriding thing to children who had 3rd degree burns and just thinking about that made me shiver. But I don't make my decisions based on that.

Think about it. Do we start banning open heart surgery because just the sound of cracking a chest will give you nightmares and describing the rest of the process makes some people feel icky? No. That would be ridiculous.

So why do you think in cases where there is real danger to the mother, banning this procedure is okay? The only reason I've seen you give is because you don't approve of the required steps and they gross you out. And because of that you think that it should never ever be able to happen even when there's risk to the mother? Or that someone who's not even a doctor and works banker's hours is supposedly going to make that choice fast enough in the emergency circumstances where this might be appropriate? It can't be because of risk - open heart surgery is just as much a life and death situation.

That's what this law requires. That's what you are suggesting that the Supreme court use as it's criteria. I have some concerns they're going to make a good decision here even with all this advice they've been getting and all that education they have. I have no faith at all in your tossing tummy as a rubric.

I don't know what those lawmakers were thinking. They have a blueprint to write this law in a legal fashion, but they chose not to. I don't know why. Maybe the lawmakers were too grossed out by that description, too, and followed their heaving bellies instead of legal reality.

We have a real problem here people, and if you're too faint-hearted to face it with your brain instead of your stomach, then shut up and faint quietly in the corner. Real life and real people have some gross parts, and we have real work to do getting this situation dealt with.