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- cross-posted to:
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Some select paragraphs:
Across Idaho, doctors are leaving, looking for states where politics don’t dictate how they practice medicine. The consequences of Idaho’s anti-choice laws hit Sandpoint fast and hard, hollowing out medical care for women within months. For years, the town had a maternity ward that delivered as many as 350 babies every year – now it has nothing. The OB-GYN ward shut down this spring and doctors have been fleeing the state in a steady stream, seeking shelter in places where their work doesn’t put them at risk of criminal charges or big lawsuits.
It’s become a gamble, getting pregnant and giving birth in a place that no longer has a maternity unit or any obstetricians. Sandpoint is small, fewer than 10,000 people, but it’s been a medical hub for a rural region of 50,000 in north Idaho, Montana and Washington.
Idaho is one of several states that had trigger laws: immediate abortion restrictions that went into effect when Roe v Wade fell a year ago. In August of 2022, the state enacted a near-total ban on abortion with exceptions only if the mother’s life is in danger, or in the case of rape and incest. Those instances require a police report to be filed. The state also adopted what it called an “abortion trafficking” ban, which bars taking minors to other states for abortion care. Family members can sue doctors for thousands of dollars if they perform an abortion, and doctors may face criminal fines and even prison time.
Idaho also became the only state in the country to stop tracking maternal mortality rates. Activists say it’s like they don’t want anyone to know how deadly their decisions might be.
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This is not a feel-good story, folks. But I’m stating the obvious.
The picture of the OB-GYN doctor standing in her garage with her packed belongings made me quite sad. And for pregnant mothers having only the support of a midwife in a region of small towns totaling 50k people - while adequate care is hours of driving away - is unfathomable.
Further in the article, there’s this interesting line:
But the women of Sandpoint are clear about one thing they want others to know: this can happen anywhere in the post-Roe United States. Nowhere is as safe as you might believe and the battle won’t stop at state borders.
This point appears to be inaccurate considering there are a number of States that proceeded to enshrine abortion rights in their own constitutions (or otherwise protect abortion access by law). Some have even expanded abortion care. The Center for Reproductive Rights makes this clear:
https://reproductiverights.org/maps/abortion-laws-by-state
I’m gathering that is why the aforementioned doctor is moving to Oregon. (See how Oregon is depicted in the above map…) I would imagine other OB-GYN doctors are doing the same.
It’s been fun watching the MAGAs crash and burn in recent years and Trump getting arrested every few weeks. But the damage that the Christofascists have done to women - and other marginalised communities - is grave indeed.
I think you got the big misunderstanding stated well. This will not happen everywhere. This will only happen in red states. This is what all these started voted for over and over. Doctors warned that they would leave for non hostile states and that the people most impacted would be rural and red communities. These stories are unfortunate but trend to leave out context, did these people get what they voted for? Most likely, in Idaho, they did. They just dint like the side effects they were warned of are now impacting them personally.
You know who’s fault it’ll be too, everyone else’s but their own, and the rage machine continues.
to your point they hate obama despite the fact obamacare save rural hospitals
They love the Affordable Care Act, but hate Obamacare.
Spoiler: they’re the same.
Here in Massachusetts, we still call it Romney-care because, spoiler: it’s still the same thing
Republicans don’t like having that pointed out either, but, as the bumper stickers said after Nixon carried 49 states for his second term, “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts.”
States aren’t homogenous, not even red states. I am sure many of the people affected voted against those politicians and laws but were in the minority. It’s a really cold and callous attitude to ignore their plight just because their neighbor thinks they should be punished.
The religious powers also want this to be a nationwide policy and they fund many Republicans in Congress. This can easily go from state bans to a nationwide ban now that we have a majority of Supreme Court justices opposed to abortion rights. All they need is another year with a big red wave.
In the last 3 elections a super majority vote for candidates that supported restrictive abortion policies.
https://www.cnn.com/election/2022/results/idaho https://www.cnn.com/election/2020/results/state/idaho https://www.politico.com/election-results/2018/idaho/
You may think it’s cold to say that they made choices that are having negative consequences that they have to deal with. I say it’s realistic that 40 years of states like Idaho pushing further right means they have to deal with it on their own terms. It is, after all, what they voted for.
Interestingly, from an outsider perspective, I could make the same argument about the whole of USA. YOU made this happen.
Yes and no. Yes Trump won the election in 2016 but he lost both popular votes in 2016 & 2020. The supreme court is not voted on and at least one seat should have been a liberal justice. Nationally the US is dictated by the minority opinion at the moment with how our government is structured. Saying Idaho is representative of the US as a whole is kind of like saying Bulgaria is representative of the EU as a whole. They’ve got their opinions and their places of influence but I don’t think anyone would say they are at the top of the pecking order.
How is saying every person in Idaho is representative for the whole of Idaho any better, though?
I mean, that is how a representative democracy works. I’m a two party system you get 50%+1 and you win. Getting more than 52-53% of the vote is very hard. Idaho is voting 60-70% + for this. Obviously individuals are individual but what is your argument? That there is nothing to be said about voting blocks because you have to consider each individual persons thoughts on a vacuum? Either you’re being obtuse or naive.
There was some article I just read, where Texas quietly amended their abortion laws - just a little, but they now allow it in a couple more situations. The lawmakers are all covering their asses, saying “Well, its not our fault, the doctors are just too scared of nothing, they should be doing their jobs!”. And everyone else is like, “But that’s not what the law says!!” And the lawmakers seem miffed that anyone would blame them for what the law says.
Enshrining abortion rights in state law will be meaningless if Republicans gain control of Congress and write new laws restricting or abolishing abortion under federal law. Lindsey Graham already introduced a 15 week abortion ban. They could also go with a 6 week ban like Texas instituted shortly before Roe v Wade was overturned or they might even find a way to classify all abortion as murder under federal law.
State law doesn’t trump federal law. At best, states might choose not to enforce the federal law and leave it up to federal agencies to police and enforce.
It doesn’t but marijuana is also still illegal federally and several states have passed laws to legalize it.
Like any law, it has to be enforced to matter. Most hospitals aren’t in federal land (though military would be fucked).
The fact that they made people transporting minors out of state to get an abortion a crime is probably the most fucking insane part of this whole story.
Women should just all pack up and leave. Let all the men have the place.
A land just full of nothing but their crazy ass laws and nothing but men with their chest puffed out walking around. Fucking each other.
As if women weren’t also voting for this in Idaho
Some faces will be meeting leopards soon.
New Moto: the women leave, the men are proud and the sheep are scared.
This was predicted. No doctor is taking a chance to be arrested or sued, let alone losing their license to practice medicine in the state.
It doesn’t just affect OBs or gynecologists. A general practitioner or an emergency room doctor could prescribe a medication and if that patient happens to be pregnant (and did not know it at the time she received the medication) and has a miscarriage due to the medication, that doctor could go to jail and be sued by every family member of the patient. It’s common sense that they would move to states where abortion is legal and where they can provide the standard of care they were trained to provide, without fear of being arrested or enormous legal fees.
I recall a thread over on Reddit, where someone in one of the dad subs was asking for advice on what to do. His wife, an OB/GYN, had gotten a job offer in Massachusetts. They were living in one of the Southern states, and her taking the job meant uprooting their young family away from nearby relatives and friends.
The response in the sub was almost unanimous telling him to move. Wife could get sued to oblivion and go to jail, etc. That would be far worse than living a few hours away from family.
I recall they did move.
My wife is a medical professional and a lot of the new nurses and doctors came from those states who moved because they can’t practice or work without getting harassed.
It’s incredibly shitty that this situation was allowed to get this bad.
That said: Idaho has been and continues to be overwhelmingly Republican, by close to a 2:1 ratio. This is a policy - and thus implicitly, an outcome - that the majority voted for. This is deep into /c/LeopardsAteMyFace territory.
Texas removing tenure is going to have this effect too—chasing your experts away might seem like a republican utopia but I promise the people will follow the experts eventually.
Exactly. Economic development follows universities.
People don’t even understand history.
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do know history are doomed to know that it’s repeating.
This is by design, they want to lower the standard of living for the average American, so that we get more and more grateful for table scraps. We have created this culture where when someone complains that they don’t have enough to eat, we blame the complainer instead of wondering why one of the richest Nations on the planet, can’t spare $20 for a coffee and donut from time to time.
The hard red states don’t want people living there that aren’t puritanical fundamentalist bootlickers. They want people who disagree to leave.
People SHOULD leave, let these cesspools rot. I’ll even contribute to a fund that builds a wall around those states. They should also forfeit all federal funding because it’s too “socialist”.
They want to make their states so unpleasant that liberals leave. Then they own the state, and it’s Congresscritters, and it’s Electoral College votes.
That’s actually the real danger, assuming the country doesn’t split up.
Kind of feels like you’re calling for them to seceded because of states rights…
The country would be better off if they split out honestly. I’ll take a peaceful divorce over looming civil war and genocide.
Honestly it is awful, but if you’re female you need to get the hell out of these deep red states that think they have any right to regulate women’s bodies.
They need to reap what they’ve sown.
Not everyone has the money and ability to uproot themselves and leave their entire support system behind. The more liberal areas with more protections tend to be high population regions with a high cost of living. We need nationwide protection of access to medical care so you don’t have to move just to get the care you need or to be able to provide an ethical level of care to your patients if you are in the medical profession.
It pains me that people are suffering, but on the other hand: good.
People will have to suffer to prove to them that they’re voting against their own interests. They need to know someone who is harmed to change their vote. They must feel the brutality of what a christo-fascist state delivers to prevent one from being instituted nationwide.
I hope this nonsense is repealed as soon as possible and the suffering ends but the suffering is necessary for change to occur.
You know that’s not going to happen though. Someone will come along and tell them all their problems are Biden’s fault and they’ll keep voting red until the day they die.
they’ll keep voting red until the day they die
Given the way the GOP keeps politicizing medicine, that’ll probably be sooner rather than later.
Normally, I would agree with you. But this one is pretty difficult to point at dems or Biden.
Considering some people complain that Obama wasn’t at the Oval Office when 9-11 happened, I have faith they can pin this on Biden somehow.
How can this be good for the people, especially minors or disenfranchised women there?
It’s not good for the current generation at all. Apparently, the state needs to be reminded of why we let this decision rest between women and their doctors though. The current wave of ignorant conservatism needs to recede and unfortunately for this generation, there’s realistically no way to do that until the wave breaks.
Haha fucken Idaho of course.
So many medical personnel moved during the aggressive COVID policies. Oregon and Washington had to take COVID infected Idaho patients, causing severe shortages on our side, all because of the inept Idaho government.
Oregon and Washington should’ve told Idaho to fix their own problems, and refused help. Yes, I know this is controversial, but how else will the population learn their voting against their own interest?
Idaho also became the only state in the country to stop tracking maternal mortality rates
What the fuck
Ah yes the old COVID strategy. If we don’t track the problem then the problem goes away! EZ Clap
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It’s a scene out of an American dream: a stretch of city beach buzzes with young families playing and laughing under the hot afternoon summer sun, moms chasing after children, splashing in the shallow ripples of Lake Pend Oreille.
Lauren Sanders relaxes among the beachgoers in a sea-green bikini that reveals her pregnant belly, keeping an eye under her sun hat on her young daughter, Gwen, who’s angling to get back in the water.
But if anything goes wrong – a last-minute emergency, a scare, an unpredicted turn - and she needs hospital maternity care, she’ll be put into an ambulance and driven over the two-lane highway to a larger city half an hour away.
The OB-GYN ward shut down this spring and doctors have been fleeing the state in a steady stream, seeking shelter in places where their work doesn’t put them at risk of criminal charges or big lawsuits.
The raft of extreme abortion laws left doctors like Huntsberger unsure if they could continue to practice any kind of family medicine in Idaho, where untrained political figures now have greater say over medical decisions than physicians.
Along with its ramping up of abortion restrictions this year, the legislature enacted a law banned gender-affirming care for minors and the governor signed a strict “bathroom bill” mandating that restrooms and changing rooms be segregated by the gender a person is assigned at birth.
The original article contains 2,285 words, the summary contains 233 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is what the Christofascists want. They don’t care, they can travel for their abortions. They can bribe, etc.
Important story but the article feels like it was written by AI which is really sad if that’s the case.
Can you explain why you think that?
