November 14, 2011

• Sterilization? It’s the law

  Son of a bitch, are we really this legally uninformed?

  Yes. Apparently, yes we are.

  Healthkicker asks why it’s so hard to get sterilization, and suggests discrimination, lamenting that “it’s almost impossible for a child-free woman to get sterilized. Once again, we see gender inequality here. “

  Do these writers have any idea how insane some of the lawsuits that have gone through for voluntary medical procedures are? It’s not discrimination on the part of the doctor if he’s scared of being sued for it 10 years down the road: it’s just plain fear. Justifiable fear. If people can sue for their dead relatives who repeatedly refused blood transfusions on religious terms, if people will sue because they chopped off their own hands and refused reattachment, then later had a change of mind, you bet your ass they will sue if they similarly get sterilized and then change their minds on the issue of sterilization.

  Ask any number of doctors: what drives medical policy? Is it statistics? Is it the latest medical journals? If they are frank, they will tell you that lawyers determine medical policy. A good lawyer can drive a doctor to destitution and professional ruin and still have time to get lunch. A good doctor may be willing to risk a lawsuit to perform some vital, life-saving procedure, but only a stupid (or particularly impassioned) doctor will invite lawsuits over a non-vital, elective matter.

  Look up the program that California ran to give free sterilization to crack whores. It was entirely voluntary, as the prostitutes did not want to get pregnant and the state did not want to have to deal with their kids. Lawyers descended on that like locusts, far-right groups were up in arms about the womens’ “right to reproduce” (but note carefully, not their right to choose not to reproduce), and the whole thing wound up costing a lot of money in court battles and having to be shut down.

  Iceland has a law for that? That’s great. Iceland is really not America in a number of ways; it has a lesbian prime minister, and more to the point, it does not have the legal atmosphere concerning medicine that America does. Raging about why the US does not have an Icelandic law without examining any of the legal and cultural differences is at best uninformed and naive.

  • 1:02 pm
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