Life, Death and Politics (by Marie Cocco for Truthdig)

Life, Death and Politics


Posted on Apr 24, 2007
By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON—The bleeding began just after Donna McNichol’s routine exam in the early weeks of her first pregnancy. “They told me I might spot a little bit after the exam,” she recalled in an interview. “But I wasn’t spotting. I was flowing.”

The pregnancy was planned and joyful. The young California health aide and her teacher husband had just announced it to their families with a celebratory video of themselves playing “Wheel of Fortune.” “I was really blessed,” McNichol, now 49, says.

Her bleeding continued even when she rested in bed. Then the nausea started. “They kept saying that was a good sign, but it wasn’t,” McNichol says. “Sometimes I would pass big blood clots—even the size of my fist.”

Neither her own doctors nor colleagues at the Planned Parenthood clinic where McNichol was working could diagnose what was wrong. She underwent test after test. No well-known aberration that can ruin a pregnancy was completely ruled out—or in. As the blood loss continued, McNichol took a reading of her iron count and discovered it was dangerously low. Fatigue sapped her. “I was just getting sicker because I was losing so much blood,” she says.

...(snip)...

The anti-abortion movement has fooled the country into believing that all the Supreme Court did last week was ban a particularly odious and medically unwarranted method of abortion. That is the least of it. The court emphatically said that Congress—not doctors or patients—can decide what’s best for women’s health. The high court ruled that when there is “medical uncertainty” lawmakers can decide what course of treatment is, or isn’t, legal.

We are all Terri Schiavo now. We all can be subject to second-guessing of our family’s medical choices from the halls of Congress. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/life_death_and_politics/