I'd never heard those statistics. I wonder how they came to that conclusion, as figuring out how someone actually feels is difficult to categorize, I think. Also, does the mindset change if it's a woman running against a woman? Do they both think that they're going to fail, or are they more likely to think that they can win?

I'm not a woman, but I'm going to be running for a local office soon. President of Brookside Development. Should be interesting, as I think we're the youngest homeowners in the association, and when I stood up to ask a question at the last meeting, I was NOT received very well. The question? "Where do our association fees go?" For some reason, they didn't like me asking about the money and got very defensive, very fast. Interesting.

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The question? "Where do our association fees go?" For some reason, they didn't like me asking about the money and got very defensive, very fast.

Your HOA doesn't publish that in its annual report? That is odd.

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And things like this are why I will never live anywhere that has a HOA/POA - I've heard too many horror stories.

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1. It's not so much if the woman can win or lose, but if a woman even can get to that point. It's not just 'setting out to run', it is getting far enough in the community that running is an option.

2. I'm on the fence with the conscience rule. I don't want to circ newborns. Should I take an F? Or do it even though I feel it is morally wrong? What if abortions were part of class? If I were pro-life should I have to take part of it? Should an OB-GYN be required to perform abortions? I really think that at least with non essential medical procedures, medical personnel should be allowed to opt out. Essential is another story. And there should ALWAYS be backup, you should be allowed to hand something off to someone else. I will be talking to my advisor, and I will have to make some decisions. It's already a given that I will not work with newborns (even though I would be good at it and I like the little stinkers) because I do not want to have to be in that decision making progress. That's a luxury I have. Other things aren't so cut and dried. But I shouldn't have to throw my morals out the window for something that a patient doesn't even need. (Like maybe assisting with a boob job on a 16 year old.)

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But there are no provisions in the current works that mandate handing your patient off to someone else. And, in many areas, denying a woman birth control is effectively CUTTING OFF ALL ACCESS. There are still places with one pharmacy, there are still places where if the doctor refuses you an abortion you are totally fucked.

The fact is, when physicians refuse to carry out procedures, they are doing harm to their patients. If you can't morally hack the procedures you'll be carrying out, don't be a doctor. Don't be an OB-GYN.

Hell, that's why I was never, not even for one second, interested in being a vet - there are parts of the job I just wouldn't be able to DO. So I chose a different career and veterinary medicine is better for it.

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Here's the thing: there are already laws in place - laws, as in acts of Congress codified into the U.S. Code - that protect doctors, clinics and hospitals from being forced to provide abortion services. These regulations are couched as protecting those rights, but are in reality an attack on contraception services. They will allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for emergency contraception *and* for regular birth control pills based on a personal belief that life begins at conception (as opposed to implantation or some later point). And nothing in the regulations requires the refusing provider to hand off the duty or give the patient/customer information about where to receive services, because that would still be assisting in the process and morally objectionable.

The regs are not necessary to protect against forced participation in abortion. It's serious overreaching.

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As I understand it--aside from the stuff zoethe pointed out below--the "conscience rule" would allow the doctor to refuse without a referral elsewhere. Which, as someone who's tried to get unreferred appointments in a major city with a zillion doctors and found the process insanity-making, is a large and horrible difference.

Even the referral is pretty awful in some parts of the country, since it might involve driving for two days--good luck getting that one past your crazy fundie parents, pregnant teenager!--but I can see why OB-GYNs are allowed to opt out of performing abortions: aside from the moral question, it's an issue of personal safely. (Thank you, the Fruitcake-American Community.)

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I'm also in medical school and it is a difficult situation. However, I think the patient needs to come first in these situations, and drawing the line on "essential" is more difficult than it first appears. For example, it seems obvious an abortion is necessary in cases where the woman is likely to not survive the pregancy. But what about prescribing plan B to a rape victim? That seems essential and basic to me, but might still be argued as "optioonal" by a strict pro-lifer. What about a scared woman in a rural environment that may end up dealing with the problem herself with a piece of flexible metal and some antiseptic when she runs out of her limited options? I'd argue that she "needs" medical intervention, because the alternative is a high change of permanent damage.

I think more leeway should be given to students; if you're pro-life or anti-circumcision and want to go into, say, dermatology or specialize in pediatric kidney medicine or something like that than likely that training isn't absolutely essential, and if you go into plastic surgery you're likely to know that you're going to be serving insecure 18 year olds more often than accident victims or women who survived breast cancer, and be okay with that fact, but it's probably not necessary for someone who wants to do cardiac surgery to be willing to deal with cases he feels are somewhat frivelous. If someone is interested in a specialty that by its nature deals with those questions, however, or if they are planning on serving a community with only a small medical pool to draw on, where referring a patient to another doctor essentiall means preventing them from getting the care they want (the closest referral is 100 miles away, their insurance only covers you, etc.), than I think you do have an ethical obligation to provide care to the people that depend on you even if you personally don't agree with the patient's choice. It's fine if (as you state) you've realized you don't want to be put into that position and chose your career accordingly, but don't go into oby-gyn or become a pharmacist or any of the other careers that DO involve those issues and then refuse to do the job. That's like a Jehova's Witness volunteering with the bloodmobile and then refusingto draw blood.

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Holy crap icon love. May I steal?

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I'm debating the existence of this journal

Seriously?

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i know, i couldn't get past that. i love reading what he has to say.

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im convinced that there are only two reasons to have a livejournal. it doesn't help you at work, you're much more likely to get fired if your boss reads your journal, it doesn't help you with your friends, exact same deal, you are much more likely to get into problems by saying something you shouldn't have said than to help a friendship. The truth is your friends don't like being part of the drama of a livejournal, they like reading your journal but when their name pops up, that's when it becomes unpleasant.
blogs do two things: 1) they let you vent, 2) they keep you writing every day. I think all writers know that it's better to write shit, as long as you write every day, than to not write at all.
The problem for you, is if you give up blogging, it will cut down the amount you write, blogging is easy for you, you can plow up a good 500 word journal entry in 10 minutes, that's a lot of words, and it's probably not good for you as a writer to stop bloggin. Sure it teaches you bad habits, but the sheer quantity of words is good for you as a writer. When you are stuck and cant progress in your stories, every word is excrutiating pain to put down, at least you can blog and throw down an acre of words. It's like a boxer who gets up at 5am to go jogging for 10 miles. The jogging doesn't help him box it doesn't help technique, but there is only so much punishment a human being can take in real sparring, so he has to go run around in circles just to build up his endurance. Blogging is like that, you are throwing down words to build up your ability to throw down words. there doesn't have to be any more reason than that. Bitching is good too, because your friend's list is always good for sympathy.

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blogs do two things: 1) they let you vent, 2) they keep you writing every day. I think all writers know that it's better to write shit, as long as you write every day, than to not write at all.

3) They enable you to keep in touch with friends in a non-obtrusive way.

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The only Democrat who was able to win a state-wide office in our very Republican state was a woman.

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I've enjoyed reading your journal and the writing tips from Clarion. If you do decide to stop blogging, will you leave it up, or take it down? (ie, should I start saving the tips you wrote about?)

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I must be weird.

I don't care if the winner is a woman just because I'm a woman. I've known plenty of idiotic women, their body parts and hormones didn't make them better people personally, not more able to be sympathetic towards other women's issues.

I don't care if the winner is a white guy, just because I'm white. I've known plenty of. . . . you get the drift.

I don't care if the winner is hetero or athiest just because I am. Or if they're having sex with the Pope because what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms does not necessarily affect policy decisions. (Not that it can't, this being prudish and juvenile about such things America.)

I don't care if the winner is ALIEN. Maybe what we need is good Dalek invasion. Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out. Or hey, Optimus Prime! Yeh, I'd vote for him. I'd vote for the dudes from <a href="http://www.recueink.org</a>Rescue Ink</a>. I care that whomever gets the JOB done. Is able to do the fair, right thing by the MAJORITY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, not just their kick-back lobbyists with special interests. And I care that you're questioning the existence of this journal. I vote that we'd miss you terribly an be the worse off for the lack of you in our daily lives.

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I don't care if the winner is hetero or athiest just because I am. Or if they're having sex with the Pope because what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms does not necessarily affect policy decisions. (Not that it can't, this being prudish and juvenile about such things America.)

The only reason this or other things MIGHT matter is if they are being hypocritical, writing legislation that matches their spoken beliefs but not their personal actions. That REALLY frosts my ovaries.

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(Now that I've got your attention amongst all the voices in the wind)

Why do I get the feeling that you almost apologize when you don't feel like posting? :-) I think everyone should take regular breaks from LJ and the 'net and just BE in their actual, I-can-touch-this-right-here-now everyday worlds.

As wonderful as Clarion was, I think it sucked your soul too. All that inner reflecting -- and yes, competition, with yourself and others -- wa quite the marathon. No wonder you are drained of psychic energy.

Granted, your DRIVE is part of what makes you you, and makes your posts so many things -- touching, illuminating, entertaining, instructive -- for the rest of us. And we're grateful. But not if it ends up devouring you. Ease back. Forget about us and writing. It won't leave you. That's impossible. Have faith. And have a good time doing something totally non-brain-related. Say, like, oh, NOTHING for a change. (I bet that will hurt, huh?) lol! ;-P

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Yeah, for real--please take a break if you need it, but don't permanently cut me off from my favorite source of daily insightful entertainment!

Ain't nobody does it like you, Ferrett.

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I feel physically ill, both from the thought of no more Ferret posts and from the thought of that "conscience rule" becoming reality. I've already sent out some emails and such on the second point. Anything we can do to help on the first point?

EDIT: As someone above me said, if you feel the need to take a break from blogging, by all means, please do so! Whatever would help you in the long run. I just know I would be very sad if I knew there would be no more Ferret posts ever.

Edited at 2008-08-27 07:32 pm (UTC)

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Everyone commenting so far seems to have been annoyed by the conscience rule. You may or may not recall from earlier comments that I'm usually quite a liberal-leaning (especially on social issues) person, and that I'm definitely in favour of abortion (somewhat beyond pro-choice, though mostly in jest). But even so, I am actually in favour of the conscience thing - provided that the public health services are required to preferentially hire people who will provide the largest range of services possible.

I strongly disagree with individual doctors being obliged to perform operations they object to. I disagree with "do it or don't be a doctor" - fewer doctors is not the goal here. "Do it or we'll preferentially hire this other available person who will do it" is absolutely fair enough.

Imagine the equivalent in whatever your field is. Programmers, "write a destructive virus into this software that's going to be sold to millions." Architects, "design this building so it's unstable in ten years so we get more work." Imagine your job requires you to do something you philosophically object to. Is that okay? Will you just suck it up? Will you be fine with quitting and retraining and finding a new field? Probably not.

And to stem the obvious "well maybe just for new doctors" position, how about if all would-be programmers are required to learn how to embed viruses in their software and warned they should choose a different field if they won't be okay with doing that when asked to? Again, no, that's not reasonable.

I think people who are objecting to the conscience rule (conceptually, not just implementation-wise which we can all agree is a horrible disaster) are dehumanising doctors, thinking of them as a service rather than as a person providing a service.

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As someone who is directly related to a doctor and knows many doctors socially, I respectfully disagree. First, your equivalent arguments are fundamentally flawed. In those cases, both things being done would directly harm many other people. In the case of a doctor performing an abortion and/or refusing to prescribe birth control, there is only one (or possibly two, depending on your belief) person being harmed. Thus, this is an issue that is extremely personal on every level. We're not talking about thousands of people being harmed with every act, we're only talking about the health and wellness of two people, tops.

As for "do it or don't be a doctor", that's not entirely what most people are arguing. There are very few positions one could take as a doctor that would put them in the position to perform an abortion. Likewise, most doctors besides OB/GYNs are required to prescribe birth control. It is entirely possible to be a doctor and not have to deal with either of those issues. It's even possible to be one of those doctors and not have to deal with those issues, if you choose your workplace carefully. If you consciously decide to go into that particular arena, then you need to be prepared for what you will have to do. Otherwise, it's more than easy to avoid it entirely. Obviously, for nurses it can be another issue, but most of them have similar options.

I'm not dehumanizing doctors. I know doctors, I grew up with doctors. My father would be horrified if someone suggested to him that he should perform an abortion, because he absolutely loves children and it would hurt him deeply to take one out of the world before it was born. That's why he's a pediatric intensivist. He chose a field where he doesn't have to perform abortions. It's not as hard as you would think.

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The people that are in PUMA need to be slapped over and over again. If you're going to vote for McCain, vote for him because you think he's the best person for the job. Not because he's Not Obama.

And what these anti-abortion nuts keep over-looking in the debate over the "conscience" rule is: YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORK THERE! Our country is currently facing a massive shortage of health care workers, so there are plenty of places with policies that jive with your morals. If you don't want to provide abortions or contraception, don't work in a place that makes you do it. There is absolutely no need for a law that MAKES a clinic/hospital dance around your personal morals and and give you the power to deny women the right to decide what happens with their own damned bodies.

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Please do not delete the journal, but do please take a break from it if that is what you need to do.

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So, if she'd won, would you have written about black rights not being supported?

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Depends what the Bush administration was trying to pass at the time. I know of no equivalent strategy now.

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Please don't leave us. O.O

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I propose a new law allowing cops to choose not to enforce any law they don't agree with. Yeah that should work out well.

Also just wait until some doctors only have moral issues with black, gay, female, or muslim patients or something along those lines.

Lately more and more I get happier about living in Canada and not the states.

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