The global gag rule and what to do about it
BMJ 2017; 356 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j511 (Published 01 February 2017) Cite this as: BMJ 2017;356:j511All rapid responses
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This article glisses over the central dilemma of abortion, which is where the right to life of the unborn is balanced against the rights of the women. People of good conscience differ on where this balance lies. Different countries differ, and different communities within these countries differ greatly on this issue. This policy change is consistent with republican policy since the eighties. Whether that view is misogynist rather depends on your point of view.
The empirical data presented is usually narrow and one-sided, as in this case, where abortion rates in Ghana are cited, but only is this clear when reviewing the references. It is relatively easy to see evidence of the opposite being true - for example, in the Republic of Ireland, where abortions are restricted to cases where the woman's life is at risk, including suicide. The domestic abortion rate in Ireland is around 30 per year with some 4000 travelling abroad, and an unknown number accessing abortive drugs on the internet. Overall the rate being around 4 per 1000 women aged 15-44 per year. This compares to the UK where the abortion rate is 16.0 per 1,000 women aged 15-44, where it is accepted that abortion is available on demand. This is more than triple the rate of 5.1 per 1,000 recorded in 1969 in the UK.
My point is that statistics can be used to illustrate a point, but that they can be subject to confirmation bias. I think we should always return to the central ethical question. The balancing of the right to life of the unborn and the rights of the mother.
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Dr Schramm has pointed out the risk of a possibly fatal result of errroneous action of an NHS official: a pregnant woman from an EEC country unable to receive NHS care.
If the official concerned is obeying some orders from a superior, the superior ought to be gently admonished. If the official was acting off his (her) own bat, then clearly the NHS should URGENTLY carry out inservice training.
BREXIT: Has Her Majesty's Govt lost all decency?
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The United Nations Committee Affirms Abortion As A Human Right
Pope Francis has said that priests are to absolve women and health workers who procured an abortion or aided in one.
The right to safe abortion, to determine when and if to become a parent, and the right to healthy sexuality is an issue of both human rights and of social justice. Induced abortion is one of the most commonly performed medical interventions. Making abortion illegal does not reduce the number of abortions. Access to safe abortion and legalization of abortion can prevent unnecessary suffering and death of women.
In countries where abortion is legal and available, abortion is an extremely safe procedure. Making abortion illegal does not reduce the number of abortions: it simply reduces the safety of abortion. According to The World Health Organization (WHO), 20 million of the 42 million abortions performed every year are illegal and unsafe. In every country, it is young, rural and low-income women who bear the most suffering from unsafe abortion. These women are often already mothers, struggling to support the children they already have. With no safe options, women try to abort using sharp instruments or unsafe chemicals, or they seek help from people with no medical training. As a result, a woman dies of an unsafe abortion every 10 minutes (about 47 000 women every year).
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Increase social burden and unhappiness, increase ER calls, reduce confidence in state support.
What is there to be done?
Grow awareness of human rights, closely survey the use of public funding, empower young people and other social categories at risk.
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Going beyond this irrational and inhumane act (or, rather, acts by successive Republican administrations, now compounded by Trump's even more malignant step), I am unable to understand how the anti abortion (or medical termination of pregnancy as it is rightly termed in the Indian law on the subject) lobby can label itself pro life, for this medieval prohibition condemns millions of unfortunate women to horrendous death or disability at the hands of back street quacks.
Father forgive them. They know not what they do.
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Policies originate from humankind itself. The good or bad of any policy basically depends upon its intention, motives and expected outcomes. All policies should consider the affordability of people, places and time. The precise health and welfare policy of any nation or territory must be defined primarily by the nation or territories concerned.
Developing nations need to be viewed in their original context. The policy makers or practitioners of developed nations cannot properly and adequately decide the fate of the health care of the countries with restricted resources. I suggest policy makers of developed nations should think, implement, evaluate and follow a holistic approach whether it is abortion policy or any health policy.
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The authors mourn the threat by the Trump presidency to what they see as legitimate world wide family planning (FP) services. They don't apparently see that the FP spending they so value may have ushered in the very circumstances they so abhor.
Inspection of before- and-after FP population pyramids (1950s versus now) reveals the profound alteration in population structure and the relative loss of a broad base of youth in impacted countries such as our own. Arguably, consequences for the developed world of the illustrated below-replacement reproduction include the relative growth of an elderly population with which the NHS cannot cope; too few indigenous young people to train and so skills shortages; dependence on mass immigration to man industry and run services such as the NHS; lack of innovation and economic stagnation as in Europe and Japan; and, ironically, a lack of the young voters who would have blocked political aberrations such as Brexit and Trump himself.
Yet the West and publications, sadly, like the iconic BMJ, press developing countries to adopt policies that have, arguably, so undermined our economic and political wellbeing. Trump may have done them a favour. Perhaps in Theresa May's hoped for trade agreement he'll do the same for us?
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This crazy man will ruin freedom and recent advances in medicine just because "he wants" to do so. Mankind is in danger with Trump. Many big advances in medicine will be ruined due to his mad policy. I think he thinks for a few selected humans probably with the same social class of him, a very few.
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It is so easy to moan about America's problems rather than concentrating on what is happening here and now in Britain, where European patients are already having normal pregnancy care denied because of BREXIT.
These are patients which are at risk of all kinds of pregnancy complications, and some people in the NHS simply refuse to see them because they first want their "Visa status" to be checked.
European doctors in France, Spain, Gerrmany, Poland ... are still seeing more British patients than British doctors seeing patients from mainland Europe.
Trump is far away and elected by Americans.
Britain has voted for a Brexit and has already started not to treat European pregnant women in the NHS when any European in Britain should be able to be treated, especially in pregnancy.
Babies shouldn't be at risk of dying because their mothers are spending a few months in a country which is not the country of their passport. Mothers shouldn't be at risk of dying because somebody has their own premature interpretation of Brexit.
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Re: The global gag rule and what to do about it
What abortion ban are you talking about? Do you live in a real world? Americans are sick and tired of publicly funding abortions. That is the real world. You want an abortion, you pay for it, period. See, the equation is simple in the real world, no need to conflate with leftist politics.
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