Michigan medical students take a stand to support abortion care

As a nurse, I wish abortions were rare. Nevertheless, the risks of making abortions illegal put women at risk of morbidity and death. In my opinion, the general public does not understand about how making all abortions illegal will cause many innocent women to suffer as a result of being forced to carry to term an unwanted pregnancy or others that may be forced to bear a fetus conceived as a result of rape or incest. 

Echo report published in Medscape Nurses

Dozens of University of Michigan medical students walked out of their white coat ceremony Sunday as a keynote speaker began to talk. 

A Twitter video showing the walkout has gone viral. By press time, the video had garnered more than 9.5 million views. 

In fact, the walkout comes days after more than 340 medical students at the school had signed a petition opposing the selection of Michigan assistant professor Kristin Collier, MD, for the ceremony because of her anti-abortion views, according to The Michigan Daily.

In response to the incident, a medical school spokeswoman told Medscape Medical News that Collier was chosen to be speaker "based on nominations and voting by members of the U-M Medical School Gold Humanism Honor Society, which is comprised of medical students, house officers, and faculty."

The press statement continued, "The White Coat Ceremony is not a platform for discussion of controversial issues. Its focus will always be on welcoming students into the profession of medicine. Dr. Collier never planned to address a divisive topic as part of her remarks. However, the University of Michigan does not revoke an invitation to a speaker based on their personal beliefs."

The university further stated that it remains committed to providing reproductive care for patients, including abortion care, which remains legal in Michigan following the recent US Supreme Court ruling overturning abortion rights, according to the statement by Mary Masson, director of Michigan Medicine public relations.

The state has an abortion ban, but a recent court order temporarily blocked enforcement of it, according to the statement.

In her speech, Collier recognized the divisiveness of the issue. "I want to acknowledge the deep wounds our community has suffered over the past several weeks. We have a great deal of work to do for healing to occur. And I hope for today, for this time, we can focus on what matters the most, coming together with a goal to support our newly accepted students and their families."

Following applause from the remaining audience, she continued to offer advice for the incoming students about how to thrive in their chosen profession.

Collier, a graduate of the medical school and director of its Health, Spirituality and Religion program, has 15.2K Twitter followers. She has been known to post anti-abortion sentiments, including those cited in the students' petition.

"While we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University's position on abortion and supports the non-universal, theology-rooted platform to restrict abortion access, an essential part of medical care," the petition reads, in part.

The petition states that the disagreement is not over personal opinions. "We demand that University of Michigan stands in solidarity with us and selects a speaker whose values align with institutional policies, students, and the broader medical community. This speaker should inspire the next generation of healthcare providers to be courageous advocates for patient autonomy and our communities."

For more news, follow Medscape on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

Twenty-two women who dared to come forth - the brave ones: Donald Trump and rape

Thank you Jia Tolentino! Essay echo published in The New Yorker.

Here is the list: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-trumps-accusers-allegations-sexual-misconduct/story?id=51956410

E. Jean Carroll is bravely among the litany of women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct including rape.

One of the things I have feared most since the night of the 2016 election is the inevitable hardening of my own heart—and what such hardening might lead to, especially if it were experienced by many other people as well. 

Specifically, I feared that the Trump era would bring a surfeit of bad news, and that I would compartmentalize this bad news in order to remain functional, and that this attempt to remain functional would itself be so demoralizing that it would contribute to the despair and distraction that allowed all this bad news to occur.

When I imagined specifics, back in November, 2016, I pictured something like last week—or part of it. I imagined that undocumented families would be openly and cruelly persecuted in America, and that there would be plans of mass raids and internment, and that as this was happening I would not be rioting in the street as I ought to but depressively checking things off my Google Calendar to-do list and probably writing a blog post about a meme. What I didn’t imagine, though—and what actually occurred last week—is that a respected and well-known writer would accuse the President of raping her, and that I would be so sad and numb, after years of writing about Trump’s many accusers, after watching Brett Kavanaugh get confirmed to the Supreme Court in the face of credible sexual-assault allegations, that I would not even have the courage to read the story for days.

E. Jean Carroll, now seventy-five years old, is a longtime advice columnist for Elle. Her approach to life is distinctive: brisk, stylish, tough, compassionate. Her columns provided an early and crucial model for me—when I was little and waist-deep in the mistake of trying to understand life through women’s glossies—of never giving my personal problems more weight than was absolutely necessary. 

The essay that she published last week, in New York, titled “My List of Hideous Men”—it’s an excerpt from a forthcoming book—performs the tremendous and awful feat of bringing her sharp-edged breeziness to bear on a story about being raped. Carroll’s “hideosity bar is high,” she writes. A boy who shoved a stick or rock up her genitals when she was a girl doesn’t make the list. Hunter S. Thompson, slicing her pants off with a knife in a hot tub, doesn’t make it either, because, she writes, “to me there is a big difference between an ‘adventure’ and an ‘attack.’ ”

Carroll goes on to detail multiple sexual assaults: by a college suitor, by a boss who chased her down a hotel hallway, by the former CBS president and C.E.O. Les Moonves. (Moonves denies the allegation.) “By now, Silent Generation aside, the question has occurred to you: Why does this woman seem so unfazed by all this horrible crap?” she writes. “Well, I am shallower than most people. I do not dwell on the past. I feel greater empathy for others than for myself. I do not try to control everything.” Plus, she adds, she’s a born cheerleader: she was a cheerleader in grade school, in high school, and was even the winner of a competition called Miss Cheerleader U.S.A. For years, in her advice columns, she cheered for each correspondent to “pick herself up and go on.”

But there are two men, she writes, whom she wishes she’d spoken about sooner. One is a camp director who repeatedly molested her when she was twelve. The other is Donald Trump. The incident happened in the fall of 1995 or the spring of 1996, she writes. She and Trump ran into each other at Bergdorf Goodman; Trump convinced her to help him shop for a present in the lingerie department; Carroll—“and as I write this, I am staggered by my stupidity,” she states—went into the fitting room with him; Trump shoved her against the wall, unzipped his pants, and forced his penis inside her. Eventually, Carroll fought him off and ran away. She still carries around the shrapnel of this encounter, myriad pointed details lodged in her mind—such as the fact that, at the beginning of the struggle, she was so shocked that she was laughing. There is a limit, for everyone, to the uses of compartmentalization. Whether it’s “my age, the fact that I haven’t met anyone fascinating enough over the past couple of decades to feel ‘the sap rising,’ as Tom Wolfe put it, or if it’s the blot of the real-estate tycoon, I can’t say,” Carroll writes, closing her essay. “But I have never had sex with anybody ever again.”

A lot of hearts seem to have hardened, not just in response to Carroll’s story, but in the long lead-up to it. When the piece appeared online, there was an immediate unspoken sense, I thought—although it’s certainly possible that I’m projecting—that it would tell us only what we already knew. Trump accused himself of sexual assault, on tape, in 2005, while filming “Access Hollywood,” and we found out about it just before the election, and, because any man who boasts about grabbing women by the pussy is likely to have done so and worse, repeatedly and with no compunction, it’s all been extremely, deadeningly predictable from there. The White House said in a statement that Carroll’s story was “false and unrealistic” and was “created simply to make the President look bad.” Trump later stated that Carroll was just trying to sell books, and claimed that he had never met her, despite New York running a photo of the two of them talking at a party. “It is a disgrace and people should pay dearly for such false accusations,” he said. On Monday, in an interview with The Hill, Trump, deploying a blatant grotesquerie that was surely intended to play to his base, said, “Number one, she’s not my type. Number two, it never happened.”

But a public figure accusing the President of rape is news. Even though Carroll is at least the twenty-second woman to accuse Trump of sexual misconduct, she is only the second to accuse him of rape. (The first was Ivana Trump, who later downplayed her story.) Though Carroll received the pride of place at New York that she deserved, appearing on the cover of the magazine, her story did not make the front page of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, or the Chicago Tribune. The New York Post deleted a story about Carroll’s allegations on Friday. The Times was slow to feature the story online and didn’t run its piece in print until Sunday. Weekend talk shows mostly ignored the topic; on Sunday, Brian Stelter, on CNN, discussed the lack of attention the story was getting, citing the possibility—the reality—of media fatigue. There have been so many accusations against Trump that none has been able to receive the undivided attention that it ought to, Stelter suggested. And the news cycle itself is so quick-moving and chaotic that every important story, regardless of its subject, is metabolized too fast.

There are other explanations, too, though none of them are particularly satisfactory. Newspapers tend to prioritize stories that they’ve broken in house. There are also good journalistic reasons for seeking independent confirmation of a story before giving it prominence. But, on Monday, Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the Times, acknowledged that the paper had “underplayed the article.” Though Carroll’s account was vetted by New York—two friends confirmed that she told them the story contemporaneously with the event—it was a first-person account rather than an investigative report. And it gets harder to tell this story over and over and over, as a lesson we learned in 2016 only becomes clearer: there are many people in this country, including, apparently, the majority of Republicans who hold national office, who don’t believe that rape is that big of a deal. 

As we saw during the Kavanaugh hearings, a portion of those people may grow to like a man better after he is accused of sexual assault. In her essay for New York, Carroll acknowledges the risk that she might make Trump more popular by telling the story of how he raped her. In these cases, the accuser is not so much disbelieved as conscripted into a narrative of women attempting to victimize men by arousing public sympathy. The powerful solidify their power by pretending that they have been threatened and attacked. This dynamic is central to both fascism and abuse. 

It has felt impossible, in the Trump era, to hope even for a second that our governing systems will operate on any standard of morality. What we have instead is a standard of consistency. If the President had ever convincingly espoused ideas of respect for people who are not like him, or of equal rights for women, it’s possible that he would be held accountable for his actions. Instead, he promised mass campaigns of cruelty against undocumented immigrants, and he is delivering. He said that he grabbed women by the pussy, and many women—twenty-two, so far—explained that, yes, he did that, or something like it, to them. 

Carroll’s essay—exceptional, devastating, decades in the making—has made me consider how hard it is to understand right away that you’ve been exhausted into submission, especially when submission and endurance feel inextricable. It’s reminded me of how high I’ve let my own hideosity bar get lately, and also of the fact that no one can lower it again but me.

Jia Tolentino is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

Republican Red Herrings

Republicans are masters at creating "red herrings". In other words, they're experts at diverting attention from their true intentions by stirring up trouble to divert attention from their real goals.

Abortion is an example.  Abortion is an extraordinary response to an unwanted pregnancy.  Yet, under the guise of a "right to life" morality, the Republicans take extreme positions on a woman's right  to an abortion, as though they are the moral regulators of all things sexual.  An obsessive right wing opposition to abortion is as difficult to understand as the issue is complicated.  

When a woman is raped or the victim of incest, the right to an abortion should be a reasonable, last resort, alternative to forcing her to carry a fetus created by assault.  Rather than acknowledge this reality, Republicans waste time and energy opposing all women's access to abortion, except, of course, if she can afford to travel to Mexico to pay for the procedure.  

Let's call abortion what it really is - it's an assault against poor women.  I don't know any woman who wants to have an abortion.  Yet, no one walks in the shoes of a woman who obtains an abortion.  We can counsel women to prevent unwanted pregnancy, we can adjudicate sexual assault, but we cannot completely eliminate abortions. Abortion is a red herring the Republican use to stir up a right wing agenda to prevent poor women from having access to quality health care.  

Texas State Senator Wendy Davis finally held up the red herring and disclosed anti abortion legislation as class prejudice.  She stood up to the right wing when a movement to close all safe abortion clinics was nearly passed in Texas.  

Davis showed Texans the red herring.  Abortion is a very difficult issue, but it shouldn't be a public policy that puts access to women's health care at risk.  In Texas, the abortion bill  filibustered by Senator Davis would close all safe abortion clinics, where poor women access the procedure.  This isn't about abortion. Rather, it's discrimination against poor women who can't afford to pay for services a wealthy woman can easily access.  

What's most remarkable about the Davis filibuster is that it happened at all, in conservative Texas.  Her notable effort may indicate how Texas is on the brink of a political sea turn and abortion might be the unlikely weather vane pointing to change.

Davis filibustered a bill which mirrored the U.S. Congress’ effort to pass a 20-week abortion ban .  She was as tenacious as right wing extremists are obsessive; but her efforts put a national spotlight on Republicans who, at a state level, are going after women’s rights. 

State Senator Davis has now created a 'women's spring".  Women will not be bullied...!!! is the outcome of the Senator Davis filibuster.  Clearly, most Americans are not impacted by laws preventing abortions, so it makes no sense to waste time and money opposing this extraordinary women's health procedure.

Other red herrings Republicans ingeniously have created include:

1.  Socialized Medicine - this is a red herring to oppose the progressive reforms passed in Obamacare's Affordable Care Act.

2.  Birtherism- this red herring was created to stir anti-immigrant sentiment because, in fact, it's a concept deliberately conjured up to stir hate against President Obama's father, who was an African from Ghana.

3.  Path to Citizenship - this red herring is an anti-immigration euphemism created to cause confusion about how hard working illegal immigrants can, through a daunting process, become American citizens.  It seems to me, people who entered the U.S. illegally, but work to pay $xxx.ooo in taxes and have been law abiding citizens, have a right to become American citizens.  Anyone who opposes a path to citizenship should explain how it is they, as opponents, are themselves, American Citizens and why they oppose others who want to share this right. 

4.  Second Amendment Rights - this is a red herring to protect the gun industry against regulations that mitigate the sale of deadly weapons.  People's rights to safety are secondary to the rights of gun owners who enjoy a magical immunity under the Second Amendment to own as many deadly weapons as they want to buy.  

It's sincerely difficult to understand how Republicans continue to get away with their red herring creativity.  This cunning influence over public policy is dangerous and it must be challenged.  

It's essential for Americans to vote out of office all Republicans who support extremist red herring positions where women, immigrants and citizens caught in the crossfire of guns are marginalized and devalued.  (Victims of gun violence, like the families of the children killed at Sandy Hook, are even shunned by some state legislators!)

If Republicans continue with their right wing agenda, the red herrings they create will cause their party to smell like the stinking fish who are influencing their extremism.

Republicans Have a Fixation with the "R" Word

Any intelligent person recognizes how using the word "rape" should be very carefully measured. 

Rape means assault, pure and simple. So, it makes no sense to use this word in public because it conjures up irreparable injury.

Yet, some dense headed Republicans are obsessed with this word.

It makes no sense. Any intelligent person would stay away from using  the "R" word, because it describes pernicious violence and it's offensive to the human ear.

As a matter of fact, of the nearly dozen wrong minded politicians who used the "R" word during the 2012, elections, all were defeated except Congressman Paul Ryan, who somehow retained his Congressional seat, but still lost, nonetheless, as a Vice-Presidential candidate.  Incredulously, in spite of the horror of rape and the political consequences to those who use the word in public, Republicans can't let it go. Now, they even found a fanciful thinking women to use the word for them. It's astounding, but Republicans even found a woman to speak about rape as though it is something that can be reversed or fixed.

Rachel Maddow, the vibrantly effective news anchor on MSNBC, understands the toxic combination between those who use the "R" word and political annihilation. She calls out politicians who use this word. Yet, Republicans seem obsessed by the word.

On Monday night's show (June 24) Maddow reported about a woman in the Texas legislature who was a surrogate speaker on the subject of rape. This woman legislator gave false information to her colleagues about how a rape kit is used in a hospital emergency room. Following in line with the fanciful thinking of former Congressman Todd Akin, who told a television newscaster in Kansas that women apparently have a magical immunity to pregnancy resulting from rape, this Texas woman legislator wrongly told her colleagues that women who are raped have the ability to wash away the problem in the hospital emergency department where they're provided with rape kits to prevent pregnancy resulting from the assault. In fact, the Texas legislator who publicly stated false information about rape should be censured for telling lies.  Texas Republican Representative Jodie Laubenberg said,  "...(in)..hospital emergency rooms, we have funded what’s called rape kits that will help the woman, basically clean her out. And then hopefully that will alleviate that.”

In fact, Laubenberg couldn't have done any research, whatsoever, about what's in a rape kit.  It's a forensic evidence collection kit!

Here is a description of a rape kit:  "A sexual assault evidence collection kit, sexual assault forensic evidence (SAFE) kit, Sexual offense evidence collection (SOEC) kit or Physical Evidence Recovery Kit (PERK),[1] is a set of items used by medical personnel for gathering and preserving physical evidence following an allegation of sexual assault which can be used in rape investigation. The kit was developed by Louis R. Vitullo and was for years referred to as the Vitullo kit. It is colloquially referred to as a rape kit or rape test kit. The term applies also to the collected evidence for a specific case.[2]"  A rape kit does absolutely nothing to reverse the physiological damage caused by rape.

Following is the report from Monday night's TRMS (The Rachel Maddow Show):

"...a...minority of Democrats (in Texas) managed to get...Republican supporters on record about their explicit belief that government has the right to control women's private medical needs and their understanding about what, in practice, that means.  Thus ...Texas...Republican Representative Jodie Laubenberg, found herself making this argument... about why she opposed adding an exception (to an anti abortion bill) for women who have been raped ...Laubenberg said...."[I]n hospital emergency rooms, we have funded what’s called rape kits that will help the woman, basically clean her out. And then hopefully that will alleviate that.”

Excuse me for a digression, but why are Republicans obsessed with government intrusion into their lives when it means paying taxes or providing for public safety against gun violence, but it's somehow okay to intrude into the medical care required for a rape victim? Republicans don't want rape victims to have access to abortion because, by so doing, they will need to allow for licensing of facilities where safe abortion procedures are performed.  So, women who become pregnant as a result of rape are simply supposed to use a rape kit to reverse this assault outcome.

Republicans don't seem to understand the political consequences of using the caustic "R" word.  

Hopefully, like they did in 2012, the voters will "get" the stupidity of spreading fanciful information about rape, which is a terribly serious and criminal issue.  If I didn't know better, I'd suspect some Republicans want to undermine the seriousness of rape, so they can justify their right wing obsession with eliminating all abortions, regardless of the harm a pregnancy can bring to the woman.

Republicans who continue their fixation with the "R" word should be required to interview rape victims before they get involved in this degrading subject.  As for the purpose of rape kits, any politician who spreads false information about how forensic evidence is collected from victims should be removed from office.  

Texas Representative Laubenberg has become a surrogate for Republican men who spew misinformation about rape and, therefore, she should be at the head of the "exit" line.