I’m a doctor at the only abortion clinic in Kentucky. Providing safe, compassionate medical care has been my life’s calling, and my patients’ well-being is always my first priority. But Kentucky politicians — determined as usual to interfere with access to reproductive healthcare — are trying to force me to harm and humiliate the patients who entrust me with their welfare. That’s why I’m joining with the ACLU today to ask the Supreme Court to keep Kentucky lawmakers’ insulting, anti-abortion political agenda out of the exam room.
H.B. 2, the law we’re asking the Supreme Court to review, is cruel and offensive. It mandates that I display an ultrasound to every abortion patient, describe it in detail, and play the sound of the fetal heartbeat — even if the patient does not want it, even if in my medical judgment I believe that forcing it on them will cause them harm. The law forces me to do this to a patient who is half-naked on the exam table, usually with their feet in stirrups and an ultrasound probe inside their vagina. With my patient in this exposed and vulnerable position, the law forces me to keep displaying and describing the image, even when the patient shuts her eyes and covers her ears.
Take a moment to imagine what this must be like. To tell your doctor, “thank you, but I don’t want to hear you describe the ultrasound,” and to have your doctor tell you that you have no say in the matter — that you must lie there, undressed, with an ultrasound probe inside of you, and have the images described to you in government-mandated detail over your objection. Even if the patient has already had one or more ultrasounds performed. Even if the fetus has been diagnosed with a condition incompatible with survival. Or even if the patient is pregnant as a result of sexual assault, and having to watch and listen to the ultrasound over their objection forces them to relive that trauma.
We have had patients burst into tears when we tell them that they must undergo an unwanted narrated ultrasound and that they must close their eyes and cover their ears if they want to avoid the speech Kentucky politicians insist we force upon them. I’ve had patients sob through the experience, and others pull their shirts up over their faces to cover their eyes.
As physicians who have dedicated our professional lives to providing compassionate medical care, being ordered by politicians to force this unwanted and harmful experience on patients who have sought our help is appalling. It goes against the very fundamentals of our role as healers and violates the trust at the heart of the physician-patient relationship.
My patients’ health and well-being come first, and if there is anything I can do to protect them from politicians trying to barge into the exam room, I will do it. Today, that includes asking the Supreme Court to put an end to this insulting political intrusion.
Enough is enough.
Abortion - Abortion Clinics, Abortion Pill, Abortion Information 
September 30, 2019 at 11:25 am
The problem, Laura, is that the Kentucky pols find it safe enough to cater to the so-called “pro-life” crowd, a dysfunctional self-help group that addresses their fixation about their own mortality by trying to portray themselves as heroes. Until the majority of Americans understand they are emotionally crippled, they will continue to be given far more credence than they deserve. They are not true heroes by any means. They are actually heroes on the cheap.
From the aborticentrism study:
People become a heroes, as Ernest Becker points out in “Denial of Death” when they pay the price society specifies. But if so-called “pro-lifers” are not willing to give their life for their country or die penniless after a lifetime of serving lepers, can they become a hero without sacrificing their time, money, and personal priorities? Yes, they can be be heroes on the cheap:
The Shortcut Solution
Not equipped psychologically or emotionally to meet a price already established by society (such as caring daily for the spina bifida children in his community or the children of alcoholic parents), our would-be hero takes a shortcut: He creates a price that he will sell to society.
However, the price has to meet his psychological needs:
1.The price he wants society to adopt for conferring heroism must create no demands beyond his level of ability. He must not be required to leap tall buildings in a single bound or swing from parapet to parapet on a web of his own devising. To have to undergo the stress of improving his knowledge, thought processes or skills would divert his too-scant energy from the more important task of transcending death personally. No years of graduate school, months of unpaid internships, hours of drill, drill and more drill– just the immediacy of the needed heroic act.
2.Neither must it threaten either his life or his psychological well-being. It will not do to die (paralyzing fear of which underlies his condition) or to further damage his already weak psychological and emotional status.
Therefore, the role of “hero” he creates to sell to society has to meet three conditions:
#1-Purgation
The role must allow him to cleanse himself of negative emotional baggage. One of the reasons that he wants to be a hero is that his repressed knowledge of his eventual death encourages neurotic behaviors and attitudes. Since, according to Becker, he has sublimated it, he not only feels unhappy and unfulfilled, but he attributes those feelings to his worthlessness, guilt, personal imperfection and so on.
He can purge himself of his negative feelings in one of two ways: either through psychotherapy or by projecting those feelings onto someone else.
Psychotherapy he might find too threatening, too slow or too expensive, but projection has none of those “failings”. By projecting, he is able to direct the hatred he feels toward himself onto others, and vent all his self-anger in a way that is safe to him, even though it might be harmful to them (as happened in Nazi Germany).
Condition #2-Conservation of His Energies and Abilities
Since he is functioning below par to begin with, the area of concern he chooses for his role must not be a drain on his energies, material resources or abilities,. He cannot afford to fail; the consequences would be personally catastrophic. He must not put himself at risk for a defeat in life or another blow to an already shaky psychological state.
This limitation bars him from developing into a person who would be an actual hero. Heroes often become so by exercising judgment, talents and skills acquired over years of study, practice and refinement, conditions involving too much time, too much cognition and too much labor for our would-be hero. He wants to be a hero, and he needs it now. He does not want to deal with the extra stresses imposed by frustration of his impulse.
Finally, many productive activities do not permit the purging of one’s negative feelings, creating an obstacle to his own desired heroism: For example, a man threatened by his unresolved feelings toward his ex-wife is unlikely to become the champion of battered women seeking refuge.
Condition #3-Production of a Personally Verifiable Reward
His role as a “hero” must produce psychological rewards which he experiences at first hand– recognition, respect, a certain amount of fame, influence- since this is the way that he achieves validation of transcending death.
While the reward for most people might be internal—they are well content knowing they have defined themselves by what they have done and need no public approval—for our emotionally or psychologically needy would-be hero it must be externally apparent. He cannot believe his feelings about himself; only the cheering crowd can satisfy his need.
Is it possible for our would-be hero to construct a scenario in which he can rescue the perfect victim from the maw of a perfect villain?
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