The town hall mob

[telemann.livejournal.com]

Norman Rockwell's classic Americana painting "Freedom of Speech."

Paul Krugman writes about right wingers who are trying to draw parallels with the town hall mobs organized by right wingers to shut down debate on the health care reform bill in Congress. Krugman's points about the deeper motivation behind this warrant some thought, I don't know if I agree with that, but nonetheless a provocative idea.

There’s a famous Norman Rockwell painting titled “Freedom of Speech,” depicting an idealized American town meeting. The painting, part of a series illustrating F.D.R.’s “Four Freedoms,” shows an ordinary citizen expressing an unpopular opinion. His neighbors obviously don’t like what he’s saying, but they’re letting him speak his mind. That’s a far cry from what has been happening at recent town halls, where angry protesters — some of them, with no apparent sense of irony, shouting “This is America!” — have been drowning out, and in some cases threatening, members of Congress trying to talk about health reform.

Some commentators have tried to play down the mob aspect of these scenes, likening the campaign against health reform to the campaign against Social Security privatization back in 2005. But there’s no comparison. I’ve gone through many news reports from 2005, and while anti-privatization activists were sometimes raucous and rude, I can’t find any examples of congressmen shouted down, congressmen hanged in effigy, congressmen surrounded and followed by taunting crowds. And I can’t find any counterpart to the death threats at least one congressman has received. So this is something new and ugly. What’s behind it?

Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has compared the scenes at health care town halls to the “Brooks Brothers riot” in 2000 — the demonstration that disrupted the vote count in Miami and arguably helped send George W. Bush to the White House. Portrayed at the time as local protesters, many of the rioters were actually G.O.P. staffers flown in from Washington.

But Mr. Gibbs is probably only half right. Yes, well-heeled interest groups are helping to organize the town hall mobs. Key organizers include two Astroturf (fake grass-roots) organizations: FreedomWorks, run by the former House majority leader Dick Armey, and a new organization called Conservatives for Patients’ Rights.

The latter group, by the way, is run by Rick Scott, the former head of Columbia/HCA, a for-profit hospital chain. Mr. Scott was forced out of that job amid a fraud investigation; the company eventually pleaded guilty to charges of overbilling state and federal health plans, paying $1.7 billion — yes, that’s “billion” — in fines. You can’t make this stuff up.

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(no subject)

[pantsu.livejournal.com]

I don't believe this was discussed but I've been relatively afk so correct me if I'm wrong.

A Brooklyn nurse claims she was forced to choose between her religious convictions and her job when Mount Sinai Hospital ordered her to assist in a late-term abortion against her will. The hospital even exaggerated the patient's condition and claimed the woman could die if the nurse, a devout Catholic, did not follow orders, the nurse alleges in a lawsuit.

"It felt like a horror film unfolding," said Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, 35, who claims she has had gruesome nightmares and hasn't been able to sleep since the May 24 incident.

The married mother of a year-old baby was 30 minutes into her early-morning shift when she realized she had been assigned to an abortion. She begged her supervisor to find a replacement nurse for the procedure. The hospital had a six-hour window to find a fill-in, the suit says.

Bosses told the weeping Cenzon-DeCarlo the patient was 22 weeks into her pregnancy and had preeclampsia, a condition marked by high blood pressure that can lead to seizures or death if left untreated.

The supervisor "claimed that the mother could die if [Cenzon-DeCarlo] did not assist in the abortion."

But the nurse, the niece of a Filipino bishop, contends that the patient's life was not in danger. She argued that the patient was not even on magnesium therapy, a common treatment for preeclampsia, and did not have problems indicating an emergency.

Her pleas were rejected, and instead she was threatened with career-ending charges of insubordination and patient abandonment, according to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn federal court.

Source. I recommend you read the entire article before participating in the discussion.

First of all I think it's important to outline what the article tells us.
- The abortion took place during the 22nd week of the pregnancy, later than live premature births have been recorded - with this in mind we should treat the foetus as potentially viable for the purpose of discussing the issue, if it ends up being a factor.
- The hospital has known of Cenzon-DeCarlo's objection to abortion and her refusal thereof to assist in the procedures since they hired her in 2004.
- Cenzon-DeCarlo claims that supervisors told her the patient could die if she did not assist in the abortion; Cenzon-DeCarlo later learned the situation was Category II. For those unfamiliar with medical lingo, a Category II is not immediately life-threatening and/or serious.
- Cenzon-DeCarlo asked to be replaced with another nurse for the procedure and not only was denied but also threatened with the loss of her job on the basis of insubordination and patient abandonment.
- As a side note the situation took place in New York and I do not believe any part of New York has adopted a conscience clause.

With those placed on the table, I want to hear your opinion on the situation. Clearly the ultimate consequences of not assisting in the abortion were the loss of her job. Do you think such a threat was fair? Do you think all nurses should be willing/required to perform abortions when it is inquired of them?

I personally say no. Nurses often specialise in specific medical positions. When you take a position to be, say, a nurse in orthopedics or oncology you are taking that position with the assumption that you will not be asked to assist in or perform abortions even if the hospital allows them to occur elsewhere in the facility, despite the fact that most of the time such nurses have been trained in general medical care. When a nurse is asked upon hiring whether or not she would be willing to perform abortions and she says no, and you hire her in light of this, you are essentially saying that you see her objection as no reason to deny her a job - and consequently, a reason to take away her job.