New arena for birth-control battle

Star Tribune ^ | May 3, 2005 | Rene Sanchez

[ihv2bme]

True...however people will do what they choose! That is one of the downs falls of society today is that know one wants to take responsibility for their actions!

[Scenic Sounds]

Well, Hermann, the sun's setting and it's still not clear. Why don't we give it 'til tomorrow morning?

You keep working on your end. ;-)

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Try reading our entire exchange. I discussed an emergency situation. He responded by saying he wouldn't choose a musim doctor. I again mentioned an emergency. He said he'd choose a Catholic hospital. I again mentioned an emergency, which, by necessity, limits election.

I was thinking of my situation at home. I purposefully live in a Catholic neighborhood of a Catholic part of the country - Philadelphia. I live 5 minutes from two Catholic hospitals, which is where I would go in an emergency, and where my wife and I and our children go for ordinary care as well. The nearest hospital to my office is also a Catholic hospital, and it is where I would go if there was an emergency at work.

Much of the rest of my time away from home is spent elsewhere in Philadelphia and its immediate suburbs. I very much doubt I am ever more than a few minutes from a Catholic hospital around here because we have so many of them.

However, in a true emergency in that small amount of my life I am away from this region, if a Catholic hospital were not available, and medical care was urgent and could not wait, I would go somewhere else.

Nonetheless, I would prefer my money be spent on Catholic institutions and to support Catholic doctors in preference to those of other faiths. If you want to say that is bigoted, fine. I don't think it is anymore bigoted than my preference to only attend Catholic Churches for sunday worship.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Please feel free to remind them of that yourself.

Mrs. Schiavo had the grace of receiving the sacrament of extreme unction in her unconsciousness, wiping out whatever sins she had by the unction of the Lord and the prayers o the Priest.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Well, Hermann, the sun's setting and it's still not clear. Why don't we give it 'til tomorrow morning?

Its not clear because you are stumbling around in darkness, friend. This seems to describe your situation:

In the middle of our life's way
I found myself in a wood so dark
That I couldn't tell where the straight path lay.
-The Inferno, Dante

Try walking in the Light.

"In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness has not comprehended it." (St. John 1.4-5)

"Yet a little while the light is among you. Walk while you have the light, that darkness may not overtake you. He who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light." (St. John 12.35-36)

[Hermann the Cherusker]

I've frequently seen the subject raised, but not to "push." It's taught in medical schools that patients frequently won't bring up issues they're concerned about, especially related to "embarassing" topics. I've certainly seen doctors ask "Do you need information about birth control?" or something like it.

This is what I consider pushing. I vividly recall this conversation we had when we lived in a non-Catholic area and had to use are regular non-Catholic Ob/Gyn practice.

Doc: "I see that you've checked off that you don't use any method of birth control."

Wife: "Well, if I don't want to become pregnant, I'll use NFP."

Doc: "Don't you know how unreliable that is? I really think you need to use something better, because [looking over at our first two children - a boy and girl set of twins - along with my wife] it really looks like you already have your hands full, and you already have the perfect family too."

Wife: "Thanks, but I don't believe in birth control. And I really would like a larger family."

Doc: "Are you sure? NFP is like Russian Roulette. I bet I'll see you back in here pregnant again within 12 months."

Wife: "I doubt it, but so what if I did come back?"

Doc: "[With a brief look of horror] Why would you want to risk that?"

Wife: "Doctor X, I love my children and I would love to have more. Is that so hard to understand? You are an obstetrician. Why don't you want me to bring you more business?"

Doc: "Well, I can see you are pretty convinced of what you want to do. Still, I bet you will be pregnant again within 12 months. But lets move on to the next question ..."

[sweetliberty]

"If these pharmacists are morally opposed to filling a perscription, as per a physician's orders, they need to find a different line of work."

A pharmacy is a business and like any business, it should be the business owner who determines what he will sell. If the customer doesn't like it, she should find a different pharmacy. The majority will always be more about money than principle. It isn't like there are no options.

"It is not their place to hold moral judgement over what a specific medication does."

It isn't a physician's, or the government's, place to determine the guiding principles of a business. And any individual is entitled to whatever moral judgements he chooses, right or wrong.

[.38sw]

Interesting. But nothing remotely resembling that conversation has ever happened to me.

Doctor: Would you like some information on birth control?
Me: No, thanks.
Doctor: OK.

[Amelia]

Doc: "Don't you know how unreliable that is? I really think you need to use something better, because [looking over at our first two children - a boy and girl set of twins - along with my wife] it really looks like you already have your hands full, and you already have the perfect family too."

Your wife took two children with her to a gynecological appointment?? She couldn't find a babysitter? What did she do with them while the doctor was doing the pelvic exam?

If the doctor thought your wife was a bit overwhelmed already, there might have been a reason.....

[Amelia]

Mrs. Schiavo had the grace of receiving the sacrament of extreme unction in her unconsciousness, wiping out whatever sins she had by the unction of the Lord and the prayers o the Priest.

I'm not a Catholic, so perhaps you'd explain this a bit further to me?

Catholics believe that you can be forgiven if the Priest repents for you? Protestants believe you must personally repent of your sins - is that not necessary if one is Catholic?

Is this sort of like Mormons baptizing dead ancestors by proxy so that they can see those ancestors in heaven?

[pa mom]

I know, but someone has to . . . ;)

[pa mom]

I understand it and was clarifying it. I didn't say I follow all of it.

[pa mom]

LOL! At least there aren't pics!

[swissarmyknife]

It would probably help your understanding if you didn't work off the assumption that Catholics were ignoramuses.

Well Hermann isn't exactly doing much to refute that assumption, now is he? :P Seriously, people like him repulse and frighten me just as much as the Iranian Mullahs (and the only difference between these fanatics, at the end of the day, is whatever religion they declare is "right"). If I could gather all his posts, show them to the mainstream American public, and somehow convince them that this (e.g. not performing therapeutic abortions because women *should* die in childbirth, it's their "nature") was the Republican platform - Hillary would win by the biggest landslide in American history.

The following quote by C.S. Lewis has been posted here many times before, but it bears repeating, since it tells us why religious fanatics of *any* stripe must never be allowed to come to power:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

[pa mom]

Not all pro-lifers do all of them. All, never, always are words one should avoid in a debate, since generalities have exceptions.

My argument was not that ALL pro-lifers don't care about children after they were born; one here made that statement and I have heard it from others.

That post was supposed to be a rumination of how we can come together with our shared beliefs and a hope that we could concentrate on those beliefs instead of the hate some are feeling. It was supposed to be a healing post; one to bring us together.

I included other ways to improve lives in America because I felt it was a place of common ground. I did not mean it to insult, attack or to be argumentative. I thought the works I mentioned would be universal goals for all of us.

[pa mom]

Well put. And society has been practicing abortion and sex before marriage for eons. Nothing new under the sun but the technology.

[Scenic Sounds]

Its not clear because you are stumbling around in darkness, friend. This seems to describe your situation:

In the middle of our life's way
I found myself in a wood so dark
That I couldn't tell where the straight path lay.
-The Inferno, Dante

Try walking in the Light.

"In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness; and the darkness has not comprehended it." (St. John 1.4-5)

"Yet a little while the light is among you. Walk while you have the light, that darkness may not overtake you. He who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light." (St. John 12.35-36)

***********************************

Yeah, but then there's:

"Logic would dictate that free people can choose what they wish to buy and sell on mutually agreeable terms." - Hermann the Cherusker

You just haven't yet sold me on the notion that bulimia and birth control warrant damnation. I'm not even sold on the idea that it's for either of us to make that judgment.

But, thanks for giving it your best. I know you did it just for me. ;-)