There is lots of interesting stuff going on at the legislature. Indiana is passing an abortion law that makes doctors pretend that abortion causes breast cancer and advise their patients accordingly. Efforts are underway to deprive Planned Parenthood of any state funding. They’re looking to pass “Charlie’s Law” – which would retroactively save the Republican bacon if Charlie White turns out not to have been a legitimate candidate because of his vote fraud. (Under current law, it looks like the second highest vote recipient would take the office – under the proposed law the Governor could appoint someone who didn’t receive any votes.) I believe I read that there was a proposal to give home schoolers tax breaks for items that public schoolers sometimes have to pay for but don’t get tax breaks for. Charter school/voucher legislation has gone to the governor. is going to conference committee. (Jumped the gun on the governor.) New voting districts are being formed.
And, lots of other stuff. But, I’m busier than a one-armed paper hanger at work. So, I’m afraid I’m not much help in keeping anyone up to date. So, talk amongst yourselves.
I haven’t read the latest iteration of the law in question, and I don’t have time to stop and do so now. But a completed pregnancy does cause changes in the breast that reduces the risk of breast cancer.
So does it come down to the philosophical question of whether the norm for an adult female is to be parous or nonparous? If nonparous is the norm, then induced abortion appears to have no effect on the risk of breast cancer. If parous is the norm, then induced abortion (and spontaneous abortion, and never getting pregnant at all) increases the risk of breast cancer.
It doesn’t come down to any such ‘philosophical question’ at all. It comes down to the opinion of my doctor and the medical community as to the scientific validity (or lack thereof) of this claim. Requiring female patients to be told this by their doctor because of anyone else’s ‘philosophy’ is a bunch of crud. You and anyone else is free to think that is relevant and ask your doctor or seek more information from other medical sources. No one should require doctors to give their patients medical information that is not medically and scientifically accepted because of a ‘philosophy’. Particularly not the ‘philosophy’ of members of the Indiana General Assembly. As with the marriage issue, I can assure you that I won’t be seeking the approval of Rep. Miller/Bosma or any other member of the General Assembly before I get married. None of those people are my parents or my rabbi. Their opinion and approval is neither wanted nor needed in the slightest. They are also not, as they’ve clearly failed to grasp, not only NOT my doctor, many of them are not doctors AT ALL. So, their medical ‘opinions’ are not wanted or needed either.
Isn’t Logic still part of the Philosophy curriculum? Except in Texas?
Or maybe I just missed something. “Giving birth reduces the chance of breast cancer”–which, by the way, is merely an approximate generalization of the current state of research, not an apodictic statement–would seem to lead to the conclusion we should be telling women to give birth, that in its plerophoric wisdom the General Assembly should order doctors to tell virgins, nuns, and lesbians to get with the program. And a few hints on hair and makeup would probably be in order, while they’re at it. Maybe we should tell them abortion increases the risk of breast cancer only when we discover that it does. I know, that takes some of the fun out of harassing distraught women.
And it gets better (of course it gets better): seems the younger a woman gets parous, the greater the protection. So the Speaker ought to be doing all of our womenfolk an even greater favor (and one more in tune with his actual purview) and lower the age of consent to seven.
If the abortion/cancer thing were medically accurate, I think proponents of the measure would see that as a plus, but the accuracy is incidental to this measure. The point of the exercise is to scare women out of getting abortions.
A genuine concern that the woman make fully informed medical decisions would probably dictate that they be informed of, for example, the medical risks of carrying a pregnancy to term.
I support the abortion bill but do not support the breast cancer increase warning. I don’t want women to be told things that could well not be medicallyaccurate.
The last time I checked, women in this country are not property. We are perfectly capable of making informed decisions without a state legislator getting in the way with his or her personal opinions and religious beliefs.
So, should tobacco companies have been forced by law to tell people cigarettes increase the risk of cancer back during the time they were denying it did?
The duty to obtain informed consent isn’t optional for doctors.
The idea that doctors are required to informed patients considering a procedure about the known benefits of an alternative to the procedure (e.g. not having the procedure at all and letting nature take its course) and about so-called “potential” risks of a procedure is non-controversial except in the abortion context.
Sure, inform women also of the medical risks of carrying a pregnancy to term. But I think abortion providers already have that pretty well covered, with their constant public refrain that abortion is safer than childbirth. (The immediate risks of both outcomes are pretty small, so saying that abortion is, say, “10 times” safer than childbirth isn’t saying much.) But when the undisputed long-term effect on breast cancer risk is taken into account, childbirth is seen to be far “safer” than abortion.
For an analysis of the legal issues related to abortion and breast cancer, see my article in the Wisconsin Law Review: http://www.kindleylaw.com/?page_id=10
While I don’t support false or unproven information being conveyed, there is nothing at all wrong with the legislature requiring that medical facts be conveyed. That’s what informed consent is all about.
It appears that the legislature has managed to create its own Rorschach test.
Bah! None of this matters! The only bill that matters this session is the redistricting maps. In my neck of the woods, they primaried 4 Democrats (Reardon vs. Stevenson, Smith vs. Dobis), created 2 open seats, crammed all the minorities into 4 districts (out of 10), and created 4 Republican House districts and 2 Senate districts.
It seems to me that, irrespective of how much they’ve pissed off the unions this session, the House will soon be as strongly Republican as the Senate is. Once Republicans have a supermajority in both chambers, the REAL fun begins.
Oh, sure. Just name one other procedure where specific medical informed consent is dictated by legislative fiat and not scientific consensus.