Life of the Mother
A lawsuit in Texas alleges their abortion ban law is causing doctors to avoid treating life-threatening conditions. One plaintiff, Amanda Zurawski, went to the hospital, with her water having broken before 18 weeks of pregnancy. The standard of care is to deliver the baby right away to prevent the mother’s death. At that age, the baby won’t live past delivery, but the baby won’t live in any event. But doctors sent her home, thus committing malpractice.
Pro-choicers blame the law, and pro-lifers blame the incompetence of the doctors. The lawsuit itself says: “exception does not require that any of the risks to the pregnant person be imminent. To the contrary, the exception only requires that a physician certify that the patient is ‘in danger of death’ or has a condition that creates ‘a serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function.’”
Therefore, media reports that the law’s wording is too vague are contradicted in the lawsuit itself. Nor was there a danger of prosecutorial over-reach in Zurawski’s case: she’s from Austin, where the prosecutor has said he’s not going to do any abortion prosecutions.

But settling the root cause of the problem can wait. Most importantly, doctors need to get the communication, and get it right away, that in all states that have them the abortion ban laws won’t protect them against malpractice suit.
They leave in place standards of medical care they’ve known for years.
After all, pro-life pregnant women get the life-threatening complications at roughly the same rate as all others. We all have an interest in doctors not being confused.
Conscientious Objection
April 5 was the International Day of Conscience. This applies across the board on all issues of violence.
In responding to the outrageous Russian invasion of Ukraine, if there’s any technique that must be used, it’s granting asylum to Russians who don’t want to be conscripted into that invasion. But not all courts have caught on; see Germany: Federal Office for Migration rejects asylum for Russian refusers (connection-ev.org)
Here's a link to a petition asking Biden to stop deporting war resisters back to Russia.
On our blog, we have Conscientious Objectors to abortion, and Tony Magliano’s Becoming a Catholic Conscientious Objector.
Letter to the Editor: Euthanasia in Vermont
From our frequent blog post writer Ms. Boomer-ang, responding to last week’s issue:
Heartbreaking about Vermont. And I feel so alone. Even your in-the-box concern about people running to Vermont to get killed. Why nothing about people who want to leave Vermont or Vermonters who seek doctors out of Vermont in order to live until their body dies naturally?
Do you have advice for people who want to go hiking in Vermont? If one falls and gets paralyzed, one is put onto the death schedule. Are prior requests to be taken out of state honored?
Our Latest Blog Post
John Whitehead offers a movie review in Displaced and Brought Together by War: The Tale of Giovanni’s Island.

Quotation of the Week
Evelyn K. Samras-Judge, Feminist activist
letter to Mary Meehan, 21 March 1986
When I worked with Alice Paul [suffragist and leader of the National Woman's Party] I asked her about the abortion question - point blank. She said directly, "Abortion is just another way of exploiting women." Then she went on to explain that the National Woman's Party was organized for the benefit of women. Killing female babies was no way to benefit or protect women.
Comments