Over a cluster of cells
Another Savita Halappanavar, although this one survived – just barely, and no thanks to the Catholic hospital that tried to kill her.
I recommend reading the whole thing. There are a lot of details, so it’s a long thread. I’ll share just some.
It’s a Catholic hospital. Way too many hospitals are Catholic: the church has been infiltrating them on purpose, to force its revolting dogma on unwilling people who need health care.
She had to go back to the Catholic hospital, because insurance.
That’s how Savita Halappanavar was murdered. They refused to treat her until there was no heartbeat, so she died.
But oh no, the church doesn’t allow that. The church does however run a great many hospitals in the US, and uses its power to murder women this way.
Something that bothers me about the religious right is that they portray terminating a pregancy as something that women do capriciously, or as something that gives them carte blanche to have unprotected sex. In the cases I’ve heard about and the ones I had personal knowledge of, it was a miserable and distressful experience for the woman. It’s not like having to go to traffic school after getting a cited for a traffic violation. Also, an embryo is basically a parasite, completely dependent on the mother, and part of her body. The idea that a non sentient being, unable to survive without complete dependence on the mother, with merely the potential for life, has more rights than a fully formed woman with consciousness and self awareness, relies too much on metaphysics. It denies the agency of the woman in favor of what ‘could be.’ They argue that it ‘could be’ the person who cured cancer in the future, while completely ignoring the possibility that it could also be the next mass murderer. Given the outcomes of unwanted pregancies resulting in childbirth, it could go either way. But the law of averages applies, and generally children who are adopted out or raised in resentment don’t have any particular advantage.
I don’t know …
Isn’t it the case that when it’s “a cluster of cells,” the vibration isn’t really a “heartbeat”? No actual heart has formed or developed, so it isn’t actually a “heartbeat” in any real sense. Do I have that right?
Maddogg:
(1) the heart develops very early; a heartbeat is detectable starting at 5.5 weeks of gestation. If you want to learn more about fetal heart development: https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/501906
(2) it doesn’t fucking matter.
I consider myself fortunate that our town has a non-Catholic hospital, especially since it is the only non-Catholic one for at least a hundred miles, which is a long way to drive when you are in pain. It isn’t just the reproductive care; I don’t want to be in a Catholic hospital for end of life care, either. And I dislike being visited by a priest every day (of course, in our local hospital, I get visited by a minister everyday. Last time I had surgery there, I asked for him not to visit; he came twice a day after that. I hate men of the cloth.)