Republican Misbehavior Promoted Health Professional Activism

By MIKE MAGEE If you wanted to create a motto for the summer of 2023 – one that would stand the test of time from the medical exam room of Ohio to the gilded bathroom of Mar-a-lago – it would have to be Jack Smith’s “Facts matter!” If that is true on a national scale, it is equally true in states across the nation where doctors increasingly are coming out from behind a self-imposed clinical curtain and going public. As reported in ProPublica last week, “Doctors who previously never mixed work with politics are jumping into the abortion debate by lobbying state lawmakers, campaigning, forming political action committees and trying to get reproductive rights protected by state law.” A few examples: 1. One thousand Ohio doctors signed a full-page ad titled “A Message to our Patients on the loss of Reproductive Rights” in the Columbus Dispatch in response to actions of a state legislature highjacked by radicalized Republicans enacting a 6-week abortion ban post the Dobbs decision. This was after their coalition delivered a protest letter with 700,000 signatures earlier to the State House. 2. Dr. Damla Karsan, a Houston obstetrician, faced off Texas legislators  on July 20th, lending truth to power when she said , ““I feel like I’m being handicapped. I’m looking for clarity, a promise that I will not be persecuted for providing care with informed consent from patients that someone interprets is not worthy of the medical excepti...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Health Policy Abortion Activism health care providers Mike Magee Physicians Trump Source Type: blogs