So who is or is not going to pay for contraception under Obamacare? And this is a religious question?
The truth of the matter is that even though the United States has promised religious freedom from the very start, they have not done a very good job, historically, of delivering on this promise. Read more on Whose Birth Control is it, Anyway?…
Filed under Contraception, Government, News, politics, Religion by on Mar 8th, 2013. Comment. 
Wait a second here. President Obama did not “mandate” compulsory birth control. As the headline plainly states, this is a mandate for insurance coverage for birth control.
Nobody is going to drag a young — or older — woman kicking and screaming into a gynecologist’s office and force her to take pills or injections or put anything into another orifice.
People are complaining that the President did not consult with people like Catholic religious groups. The Republicans especially do not like this. This is not surprising as they do not seem to like anything President Obama does — include breathe.
The Republicans — well, their opposition is supported by the part of the nation that seems to have chosen to “stupid up” its politics –left and right, liberal and conservative, yes and no. Read more on Contraception and Birth Control…
Filed under Contraception, News, politics by on May 21st, 2012. Comment.
Sometimes, when I was taking care of patients at a community clinic – whether in Oklahoma or Kansas or Massachusetts or even California – I would get students or assistants of some sort. Nurses, nursing students, a physician assistant, physician assistant students, students from nearby colleges who are training to be medical assistants, or sometimes some kind of doctor extender I’d never heard of or didn’t understand would be assigned to me or rotate from a pool of available helpers.
Of course, I would always like them to actually get some knowledge from me. Sometimes that was the toughest thing for me to do. They needed to both pay attention and have a few functioning neurons. Although I usually figured out a way to quiz them a bit, they usually seemed, if I ended up running into them days or weeks later, to remember me as the one who was fun and told stories and paid attention to them.
Sometimes, they do remember certain things I would consider “rituals.” One of my best known rituals is “The standing O” – Literally rising from my desk, applauding and shouting “BRAVO!” if someone did something I considered exceptional. You know, like a standing ovation for an actor or musician. Read more on “Standing O” For Birth Control…
Filed under Contraception by on Feb 2nd, 2011. Comment.
I have grudgingly accepted that we live in an anti-intellectual society but I find it extremely difficult to take care of people who do not know if they are pregnant or not — and have no interest in pregnancy tests. You might ask what business is it of mine?
It is my primary business – giving people prescription drugs or natural alternatives to same. If these people are women of child-bearing age, I have to know – and advise them – of potentials for birth defects, transmission of substances through nursing, and other eventualities.
So it is extremely important in my line of work to determine if a woman is pregnant, nursing or even just planning to have a baby. Read more on Children Having Children Is Not A Sustainable Model For Society…
Filed under Family by on Jan 13th, 2011. Comment.
She was 32 years old and a child of the streets. I wondered if she were a Down syndrome — what we medical types call the mosaic (partial) trisomy 21 — the chromosomal abnormality some still call Mongolism. This was purely an intellectual exercise, as the county health service would surely not pay for the expensive study, so I would probably never know.
Previous doctors had prescribed anti-psychotic medication, but she did not tolerate any of the various brands available through the county clinic. I had her try a little Abilify (arapiperazole) and it did seem to help when she remembered to take it. Or when she slept somewhere it would not be stolen.
Read more on Public Medicine — Cheap Is More Important Than Quality…
Filed under Public Health System by on Sep 17th, 2010.
She was twenty four, and beautiful – magazine cover, MTV video beautiful — with long black hair and exotic features. She was telling me about her childhood abuse, her drug abuse, and how she left childhood for pregnancy and married a husband who was in many ways more abusive than her own parents had been with her.
Although the precise details do not matter, this woman gradually revealed herself to be a victim of physical, emotional, and sexual battering so severe that that she actually looked back fondly on her time spent in a variety of foster homes. I rarely hear this. She told about her abuse with a certain flatness of facial expression and vocal tone, a certain acceptance. This is not uncommon in those who have survived a lot of emotional abuse. It is a survival mechanism; a way to put up a wall. I could understand that.
She was actually a fairly reasonable person to interview. She did not have many holes in her memory and managed to answer most of my questions with believable facts. I had to ask about her education. She had been doing well in school when she dropped out because of pregnancy. She had not used contraception then, still didn’t. When I asked her, she told me simply that since her family was Christian, such topics were not discussed. Read more on The Harm Done By NOT Providing Sex Education…
Filed under Family by on Mar 12th, 2010. Comment.