From: dking@raul.nas.nasa.gov (Dan King)
Subject: Re: Medical Enforcers? 
Organization: NAS Program, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 92 22:39:01 GMT
Distribution: na


In article <1992Nov9.231922.16381@midway.uchicago.edu> eeb1@quads.uchicago.edu (e elizabeth bartley) writes:
 
>In an emergency, any doctor qualified to diagnose if a third-term
>abortion is need and to perform one could go ahead and perform one but
>might have to justify the abortion afterwards.  (Of course, if he
>doesn't perform one and she dies, there's no "might" about him having
>to justify his lack of treatment.)
 
So you require medical approval prior to the abortion, but judicial
approval after.  What I originally responded to was your comment 
that you would require medical approval, not judicial approval.  
No one can currently get a surgical abortion without medical approval,
regardless of legality.  To have judicial review of medical
decisions is forcing judicial approval on the decision making.  
I can see no other reason for including the judiciary.
 
>In other cases, doctors who are certified qualified to diagnose
>conditions which require an abortion (ask the AMA who; I would guess
>all gynecologists and some others) can diagnose a needed abortion. 
 
I think all doctors are qualified to diagnose a need for abortions,
but I could be wrong.  Is this some sort of new certification program
you want to set up?  If it is, do you see the danger of politicizing
this certification program?
 
>Two opinions (one could be granted over the phone or after looking at
>faxed information if need be) are needed for a legal abortion.
>Barring having accepted a bribe or giving false information to another
>doctor to secure a concerring opinion, the worst he could face (say,
>for routinely certifying every case in which a woman says she wants an
>abortion as a case in which an abortion is medically necessary) would
>be losing his certification to perform or authorize an abortion (with
>a second opinion) without any possibility of having it legally
>questioned afterwards.
  
Who is going to pay for the second doctor?
 
Who is going to review all these abortion decisions?
 
Who is going to keep track of all abortions?
 
What you are going to end up with under your plan is a system much
like the one that existed prior to RvW.  That a woman that can 
afford your added bureaucracy, and could afford to make it worth 
the government hassles for the doctor(s), will be able to procure
safe and legal abortions.  The women that can not afford this,
despite her abortion possibly being therapeutic, would end up 
relying on illegal and possibly unsafe abortions.  Do you see the
potential with your restrictions of this danger, and if so, do
you really think the un-known gain is worth all this?
 
>This obviously lets the doctors override the laws on abortion at will.
>But I've no reluctance to let them do that, partially because of a gut
>instinct that if the medical profession as a whole feels that strongly
>about the matter maybe they outta be able to and mostly because it
>would be very difficult to stop them from doing so in any case

Sounds like a decent argument to keep the government, (the judiciary)
out of the decision making.  

>(I've
>been told that there were some hospitals before Roe which routinely
>performed illegal but medically necessary abortions; they were called
>tonsilectomies or appendectomies and nobody involved admitted they
>weren't; a third-term ban would be much harder to circumvent, but not
>impossible ... the doctors could pretend she spontaneously went into
>labor and the best they did to save both killed the fetus).

Guess who they did these procedures for, and guess who they will
do it for with your new regulations?  Would you be more inclined 
to take the risk of losing your "abortion certificate" for a wealthy
client or a poor client?  

I still don't understand your position.  There is this non-problem
you want to address.  Your answer to addressing this non-problem is 
additional bureaucracy and legislation that is not going to address 
your goal of responding to this non-problem.  Why?

>Pro-Choice                 Anti-Roe                     - E. Elizabeth Bartley
 
Dan King
Newsgroups: talk.abortion,alt.abortion.inequity,soc.women,soc.men