Originally published at: A Coast Guard Commander Miscarried. She Nearly Died After Being Denied Care.
ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. The night the EMTs carried Elizabeth Nakagawa from her home, bleeding and in pain, the tarp they’d wrapped her in reminded her of a body bag. Nakagawa, 39, is a Coast Guard…
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And it raises questions about whether the Supreme Court’s ruling has created a chilling effect that has further complicated access to these procedures.
No, it doesn’t “raise questions.” It does and it has. And women will continue to die as a result.
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This is the way Republicans can get back at women. I am reading “Erasing History.” It sounds like they definitely want women to stay home, have many babies, etc. The 1950’s are what they want.
It is disgraceful what Republicans will do to go back to the “Good Old Days” for them.
Waiting until death to treat her. First do no harm.
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Republicans do not want women in the military. This will help them in that endeavor.
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It isn’t about “life,” it’s about controlling women.
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So much for privatizing military healthcare.
“But that morning, she was told the surgery had been canceled because Tricare, the military’s health insurance plan, refused to pay for it.”
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Seems like a righteous headline for the Washington Post.
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It sure seems to me that while we’re culling out health insurance CEO’s, we ought to also include some state legislators who take up space and give off very little heat.
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And it gets better.
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Funny how Paxton in TX and other Republican AGs in states that ban abortion seem to think that women in their state are not US citizens with the freedom to travel, or receive mail from outside the state they live in.
Does Paxton really think all the uteri in the state of Texas are under his eye?
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And once again, the story elides the astonishing moral culpability of the doctor who refused to perform life-saving care. The patient’s life is in danger and all she needs is a 15-30 minute procedure that generally doesn’t even require more than mild sedation.
First do no harm? No, first make sure the insurance company will pay you for it.
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What a nightmare.
Welcome to the theocracy. It’ll be great! As long as you’re not a woman, queer, unwhite or non-christian. If you’re a white christian male, fabulous. If not … oops.
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And the consequences for the doctor’s career or, if it were a Texas case, their freedom?
Doctors are human like the rest of us and are unlikely to be that self-sacrificing.
States which passed such idiotic laws have found that the doctors flee them. And without ob/gyn care available maternal mortality shoots way up without regard to opinions about abortion.
You can pontificate all you want about how doctors should behave. What is observable are the results of how they do behave when faced with such restrictions.
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Tricare refused to pay for the procedure. So I think we’ve reached the point where the murder of the United Health CEO and the over turning of Roe connect. If her health insurance, Tricare refused to pay for the procedure then she would have to pay out of pocket. This is where EMTALA is suppose to come into force.
But it sounds like at the time she had been at the hospital in the morning she wasn’t experiencing blood loss, and I bet someone was trying to get someone at Tricare to authorize the treatment. But it goes to show that things can turn very dangerous very quickly. It seems to be similar to what happened to a couple of women in TX.
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It’s California, not Texas. And Texas has a life/major-bodily function exception that too many doctors are too chickenshit to invoke even though their local blue county D.A. is never ever going to charge and no jury will ever convict. Too many doctors putting their own interests above their patients.
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My point exactly. That is how humans have always behaved – doctors or otherwise. Any outfit which imposes such risks on the docs - will face a shortage of docs. A doctor who believes that he will be prosecuted is not going to be much assuaged by being assured that a jury is unlikely to convict.
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Your point of doctors being too chickenshit is the opposite of my point.
Please send me any cases of doctors deciding to let their patients die.
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Death of Savita Halappanavar - Wikipedia(n%C3%A9e%20Savita%20Andanappa,was%20denied%20on%20legal%20grounds.
Any and all docs who send bleeding women to go sit in the parking lot until they are nearer to death risk this. Any woman forced to continue a septic pregnancy as long as the doomed fetus has a heart beat.
You are arguing that docs shouldn’t be that chicken shit and should be reproached if they are…But the fact is that they are like that or you wouldn’t have these cases to argue about.
And indeed a doctor who might do the right thing in a crisis can look ahead when choosing where to practice and decide they don’t want to face those threats if their patient needs an abortion to.dabebtheyr life and so decided to practice elsewhere.
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I’ve heard both kinds of story. When they do so decide (a soon-to-die-anyway cancer patient in a great deal of pain – I learned this from a neighbor who was an oncology nurse) to a declaration of a pediatrician, “Not on my watch.” Since my son became a doctor, I’ve stopped being emphatic about what doctors should do and when.
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