I make it no secret that I’m a Liberal Atheist Hippie.. The short version is that I am a gal who voted for Obama, doesn’t believe in any deity, and wants everyone to just get along, man. 🙂
That out of the way, there was a news article I caught this morning that made me incredibly angry. Livid even. A nurse accidentally removed a patient’s IUD and then lectured her about how they cause abortions and that the nurse herself was against IUDs. To make matters worse, the nurse admitted that the other people at the office laugh about how she must be doing this on purpose since she’s against IUDs, but that’s not true since they just come out when she tugs on them. Let’s go over a few things. IUDs are Intrauterine Devices that are inserted by a doctor or nurse practitioner as an out patient procedure. It’s not something you can just go and decide to do one afternoon. The insertion is usually a little painful since you’re putting a T shaped device through an itty bitty opening. Likewise, removing the IUD isn’t a picnic since you’re basically pulling an open umbrella through a gutter downspout. Their primary function is to inhibit fertilization, not to encourage the body to expel a fertilized egg. How do I know this? I have one and did a lot of homework before making the decision to get one (Yes, I plan on being open and honest in this blog).
Now, it’s legal for a medical professional to object to doing a procedure (ie. abortion) on grounds that it goes against one’s morals or religious beliefs. I guess I can understand that (may not agree with it though), but why go into a field where you might have to object to doing the job that you spent years studying for? Why even put yourself in that situation? It would be like a mechanic who objected to the oil industry and refused to do oil changes. What bothers me about the legality of objecting is the right of the patient. If the patient in the article had known that the nurse disagreed with IUDs, I highly doubt that she would’ve agreed to be seen by the nurse. What’s scary is that the nurse could have done serious physical damage to the patient by tugging on the strings of the IUD and not removing it properly, possibly perforating the patient’s uterus among other things. Through my research, I was able to find out that you don’t pull on those strings – you periodically check to make sure that they’re there and that the IUD hasn’t failed or started to expel. If the nurse is trying to say that she didn’t know not to tug on the strings, she’d have to be lying. What’s really awful? The nurse admitted that she joked with her colleagues about having done this before, colleagues who jokingly accused her of doing this on purpose and not by accident as she claims. This same nurse who thought it was FUNNY to potentially endanger the lives and fertility of her patients was continually employed by people who suspected that she had an agenda and wasn’t removing IUDs by accident. Personally, I have no doubt in my mind that the nurse did this on purpose – given the inormation in the article, it’s highly unlikely that it was an accident. If the patient didn’t have good enough (or any) insurance, IUD insertion can run up to or over $1000, and in one swift move by a nurse with an agenda, the patient is out the time, money, and pain involved during the insertion. It appears that this nurse had a clear agenda and wanted to stop women from using IUDs and was not at all interested in their health and well-being. Personally, I want my medical professionals to be able to leave their bias at the office door and be more concerned with what is best for me, not what is best for their conscience.
I’m trying here to create an intelligent post, but what I really want to do is rant and scream and be irrational. I’m glad that the patient has filed a lawsuit and I hope that the court throws the book at the nurse. I also hope that Obama is able to undo Bush’s new right of conscience regulation and return the health rights of women to their OWN consciences and not put us at the mercy of the consciences and morals of our doctors.
On a somewhat unrelated note, I keep getting the urge to ask the abortion protesters how many times they’ve adopted an unwanted baby. Making abortion illegal isn’t going to stop women from having unwanted pregnancies and doing what they feel necessary for their own health and well-being.
Okay, stepping off my soap box now.
