On the heels of the US Supreme Court's decision on upholding the ban on partial-birth abortion, it was the first time I actually read the controversial legislation, denounced by pro-choice advocates and hailed by anti-abortion activists ( or, denounced by anti-life activists and hailed by pro-life protesters...err, I give up trying to find the politically correct terms!)
The actual bill is full of claims of preserving the health of the mother by banning the procedure called partial birth abortion ( which incidentally is not the correct medical term)and asserts that PBA is actually injurious to the health of the mother , for example:
"An increase in a woman’s risk of suffering from cervical incompetence, a result of cervical dilation making it difficult or impossible for a woman to successfully carry a subsequent pregnancy to term; an increased risk of uterine rupture, abruption,amniotic fluid embolus, and trauma to the uterus as a result of converting the child to a footling breech position,a procedure which, according to a leading obstetrics textbook,‘‘there are very few, if any, indications for * * * other than for delivery of a second twin’’; and a risk of lacerations and secondary hemorrhaging due to the doctor blindly forcing a sharp instrument into the base of the unborn child’s skull while he or she is lodged in the birth canal, an act which could result in severe bleeding, brings with it the threat of shock, and could ultimately result in maternal death"
Hmmm-all these are risks of pregnancy and delivery. So isn't pregnancy itself something to be banned if it could cause these, by this same logic? So are we headed for Margaret Atwood's Republic of Gilead yet, with only a chosen few healthy handmaidens allowed to undertake the arduous task of childbearing? We'll get there yet, from all the signs.
Following on the heels of Ruchira's Unaboober post, today's news had this to say about the correlation between the reduction of post-menopausal hormone therapy usage in women and a drop in the breast cancer rates.
"New government numbers give some of the strongest evidence yet that menopause hormones can raise the risk of breast cancer. Rates of the disease leveled off in 2004 after plunging in 2003, the year after millions of women stopped taking hormones because a big study tied them to higher heart, stroke and breast cancer risks."
So, if apart from HRT,if we could just get rid of those pesky environmental and synthetic phytoestrogens (parabens for instance, ubiquitous in all the lotions and potions we love to use for eternally young skin), it might help drive down the breast cancer rates even further. (I know that's a stretch, until someone actually comes up with a double-blind million-women study proving it.). The Unaboober would have remained a Diboober, instead of needing a partial mastectomy ( Sorry, Ruchira, couldn't resist that dig;)
A little more disturbing is this piece with doctors, in the best tradition of Robin Cook's medico-horror novels,in a hurry to declare a patient brain-dead so that his organs could be transplanted- even though he was still alive:
"A man whose family agreed to donate his organs for transplant upon his death was wrongly declared brain-dead by two doctors at a Fresno hospital, records and interviews show.
Only after the man's 26-year-old daughter and a nurse became suspicious was a third doctor, a neurosurgeon, brought in. He determined that John Foster, 47, was not brain-dead, a condition that would have cleared the way for his organs to be removed, records of the Feb. 21 incident show.
"It kind of blew my mind," said the daughter, Melanie Sanchez, "like they were waiting like vultures, waiting for someone to die so they could scoop them up."
Foster, who had suffered a brain hemorrhage, died 11 days later at Community Regional Medical Center in Fresno. By then, Sanchez said, his organs were not viable for donation."
Which, incidentally reminded me of the multiple solicitations for 'Cord Blood banking'- a hugely expensive process pushed by Cord Blood banking companies as "Preserve your baby's cord blood to help with treatment of future ills". It does have its merits, but one little advertised 'con' which, unfortunately, turns out to be a big one:
Doctors shouldn't be in a rush to clamp off the pulsating cord blood to maximise the healing potential of the cord blood (as in this doctors' study where they talk of improved collection of a potential stem cell source by early clamping:
"An excellent recovery of haematopoietic progenitors .. – inversely related to an increase in clamping time, was achieved ...By clamping umbilical cord blood at an early stage, we obtained a greater number of CD34+ cells, and their clonogenic activity increased with enrichment...").
The downside is here in a newly published study, and long suspected by doctors and midwives:
"Delaying clamping of the umbilical cord in full-term neonates for a minimum of 2 minutes following birth is beneficial to the newborn, extending into infancy..."
Cord blood banking and donations have their benefits for families with known genetic problems that could use the healing ability of cord-blood. Some day, should the cord-blood prove to be a rich source of versatile stem cells,it could turn problematic in encouraging 'early clamping' to the detriment of the newborn, just as the rush to declare someone brain-dead to 'harvest' organs.
Thanks, Sujatha for the interesting potpourri. Medical ethics are now such a tangled web of political, religious and economic agenda that the tag of "humor" (tragi-comedy) in this respect is not entirely inappropriate.
I have issues with both sides of the abortion debate - how each frames its justification based on women's health to fit the agenda. (That is a whole separate discussion by itself.) But you are right. All the risks associated with late term abortion cited in the argument are also some of the inherent risks of a full term pregnancy.
As for Atwood's vision about childbirth, it is happening already at a certain level due to social pressures. Busy and successful women (often the ones most qualified intellectually and financially to provide secure futures for their offspring) are not giving birth as prolifically as their less educationally and financially endowed sisters. The birthing business may indeed gradually become the responsibility of the Handmaids.
Organ transplants, hormone therapy, hip replacement, stem cell harvest. All well and good for cures and quality of life. But let's weigh them with the calm perspective minus the wide eyed promises of eternal life or the fountain of youth. No matter what, we WILL get old and we WILL die. And then there are always natural disasters, terrorists, car crashes and campus shootings.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | April 18, 2007 at 11:13 PM
As I saw, sarcasm, irony and satire constituted Humor as well, so I added the Humor tag in. But as in many of my Humor posts, this points to the tragi-comedy inherent in many of the medical and ethical/moral issues of our times.
No doubt, there will be a watershed case to test the merits of the law, but not very soon (apparently, from one set of statistics, 2200 out of 1.3 million abortions fell into this category.) So the Congress makes laws that may not really do much (the language of this law excludes PBA's which are performed to save the mother's life if it is in physical danger.), but are sure to energize and act as a goad for the right-wing crowd. On the other hand, it casts the whole debate in right-wing terms and has started Congress rolling down the slippery slope of legislating on women's wombs, rather than leaving it between women and their doctors to come to certain decisions.
The outsourcing of birthing in the form of surrogates and 'Wombs for Hire' has indeed become a lucrative industry of sorts, even with the component of eugenics for in vitro fertilization, donor sperm banks, donor egg banks etc.
The quest for eternal youth goes on, and has received more than its fair share of TV time (Dr.Sanjay Gupta's 'Chasing Life' series, for example). But as you say, death can come anytime. What matters is how life was lived until then. Death has always been the ultimate mystery, with religions making hay out of every human's instinctive fear of death. I wonder how people would treat life, if there was no fear of death. Would it open the door to moral deterioration (as in, no consequences in the afterworld for bad behavior), or would it remind people that life being short, they must achieve what they must in the short span allotted to them?
Posted by: Sujatha | April 19, 2007 at 07:32 AM
Look at this weird story - a possible correlation between breast cancer and under-wire bras! I have no comment, other than to say that as far as I am concerned, constricting foundation garments may not "cause" cancer but wearing them sure makes me feel as if I have some incurable disease. :-)
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | April 19, 2007 at 05:18 PM
Maybe there is a correlation, but it might not be a cause. If there is some evidence that women with denser breasts are more prone to breast cancer, it could show a correlation, because they are more likely users of underwire bras to support their denser breasts than women with less dense breast tissue, who could manage without them.
There was even the urban legend that use of underarm deodorant could up the risk for breast cancer, which seemed laughable enough on the face of it, till a study was done in 2004 showing some slight correlation between deodorant use with shaved armpits and earlier age of diagnosis of breast cancer. Link
At this rate, with anything and everything being a potential carcinogen, I'm seriously tempted to load up on fatty food and chocolate, just so that I expire of heart disease rather than battle assorted cancers ;) Ah- chocolate, now that's to die for!
Posted by: Sujatha | April 19, 2007 at 06:54 PM
I remember reading that denser and larger breasts DO have correlation with greater propensity for breast cancer. So, is it the breasts or the bra?
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | April 19, 2007 at 07:59 PM
It could be the breasts, rather than the bra, from whatever is known now.
There could a Ph.D out there for some enterprising researcher if he/she could design a study to test linkage between type of bra worn and incidence of breast cancer. Then, the under-wire bra manufacturers of the world can band up and debunk it through a counter-study funded by them.
Seriously, my opinion is that while it is currently categorized as a myth, due to lack of any studies performed to evaluate the claim, under-wire bra usage might be a piece of straw added to the camel's back, even if it isn't the one that breaks it eventually. In any case, there a gazillion factors that are being researched now currently (Link) with each one upping/reducing the risk slightly.
Posted by: Sujatha | April 20, 2007 at 05:51 AM